


Out of the Black---Old Version

by smolassassinchildx (smolassassinchild)



Series: Out of the Black--Old Series [1]
Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003), Firefly
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Crossover, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-23
Updated: 2009-05-22
Packaged: 2017-10-03 05:46:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 25,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smolassassinchild/pseuds/smolassassinchildx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Colonial Fleet has picked up signals from Earth and are prepared to make the jump to their promised home. However, they are interrupted by the discovery of a small transport ship traveling at sublight, whose captain- one Malcolm Reynolds- has an interesting tale about Earth-That-Was. Can the Colonials turn away from what remains of human civilization?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Dradis contact.”

It could not have come at a more inopportune time. The FTL drives spun up, fleet in formation to jump, Dualla counting down from 5, 4, 3, 2... Earth was just a few moments of light speed travel away, when the scanner picked up a small ship traveling at sublight. Hearts all clenched with anticipation, the room was overcome by the tension, as no one could bring themselves to speak.

“I’m not picking up any transponders.” Gaeta finally followed up. “It’s a completely unknown vessel.”

“I’m getting a message from the baseship, sir.” Dualla cut in, “They report the same signal, small ship traveling at sublight. It’s not theirs.”

“Bill,” Roslin placed her hand firmly on his shoulder, leaning close to whisper in his ear, “If we’re this close to Earth, they may be part of the thirteenth tribe.” Her voice was filled with a kind of breathless wonder- one of the things he admired most about her was awe of the universe. But he knew why she whispered it only to him.

“Open communications with the ship,” he commanded, “Put the reply up on the speakers.” His hand gently grasped Roslin’s as Dualla nodded in acknowledgement.

She adjusted her headset, trying to gather her voice as she opened the communication line. “Attention unknown vessel. This is the _Battlestar Galactica_. Identify yourselves.” As she made the connection, Adama reached for his phone.

The dull hum of the speakers kicked in, followed by the soft mumble of voices on the other end of the line.

_Gao yang zhong de gu yang! Have you ever seen a fleet that big?_

Nothing that wasn’t Alliance.

Since when does the Alliance go ‘knock knock, what’s your name?’ They’re more of the ‘Shoot first, ask questions later’ persuasion.

Well if they aren’t Alliance what are they?

Don’t ask me, I just fly the thing.

You know, last time I checked I was the captain of this ship. I’m thinkin’ it’s only proper someone come get me when we find a whole mess of ships flyin’ towards us.

Sorry, sir.

Zen me le?

A ship called Galactica_ is asking us to identify._

Alliance?

We’re thinking no.

Dualla adjusted her headset. “Attention unknown vessel,” she paused, “We can hear everything you’re saying.” She gazed out across the rest of CIC and her fellow officers who seemed to be just as bewildered by the incoming messages.

_I thought something seemed strange._

Bi zui. Galactica, this is Serenity_, over. Sorry for the confusion, we don’t usually find ships this far out. Especially not in numbers like what you’ve got._

“Far out? From where?” Roslin asked. Adama wasn’t even sure when she had snatched the phone from his hand, but she had definitely taken control by that point.

_Far out from where? What are they, addled in the brain?_

Not now, Jayne; let the grownups do the talking.

Just because you’re the captain around here doesn’t make you the boss of me.

Actually it does. Galactica_, you are a long way from home, aren’t you?_

Roslin handed the receiver back to the Admiral. He wasn’t sure why the words came, why he opened up to a ship full of complete strangers. Though strangers they were, it was the first human contact they’d had since _Pegasus_. “We have almost forty thousand people within our fleet. We have been traveling with minimal food, supplies, and fuel for almost three years now. And we have come here in search of Earth.”

The comm line suddenly went very quiet, and the CIC fell into an uneasy hush as well; it was a sea of silent faces which gazed about, never once making eye contact with another but unable to stay still.

_I’m thinkin’ this is a conversation best had face to face. _

“I agree. Mr. Gaeta, do you have a reading on their dimensions?” Adama remarked.

After a moment Gaeta looked up from the screen, “Sir, it’d be a bit of a tight fit but with careful flying the landing bay should be able to accommodate them.”

Galactica,_ not lookin’ to be rude, but you’re a military ship, correct? Last time I docked my ship aboard a military vessel is an experience I ain’t lookin’ to repeat. Had some unruly soldiers aboard her make a real mess of things. Took a good week to get her livable again. _

“Mr. Gaeta, make arrangements to send a Raptor to _Serenity_ to bring over Captain…”

_Reynolds, and unfortunately can’t do that either. We’ve got a cargo bay, not a landing bay. We just have docking for our two shuttles. However, if you like we could send a shuttle to retrieve you and bring you back over our way. _

“Captain Reynolds, thank you for the offer but I am reluctant to leave my fleet at this juncture.” Adama replied, strains of tension leaking into his voice. He felt the gentle, but admonishing squeeze of Roslin’s hand against his upper arm.

“It seems,” she said, speaking over Adama’s shoulder into the receiver, “That Captain Reynolds is apprehensive about coming aboard a military ship, and that you, Admiral, are uncomfortable leaving the fleet. I propose that we arrange a meeting on _Colonial One_. Captain Reynolds, _Colonial One_ is a ship of the democratic civilian government. I hope that will be acceptable to you.”

_Democratic civilian government? Now there’s a laugh._

Jayne. Bi zui.

It sounds as good a plan as any, Sir.

Galactica,_ we accept your offer._

Roslin was smiling, and Adama couldn’t help but feel its contagious effect, “Rendezvous on _Colonial One_ in one hour.”

\---

Adama observed that Roslin was paying particular attention to her wig. She stood before the mirror in her quarters on _Colonial One_ adjusting it, taking a moment to pause and frown in disapproval before moving to adjust it. The Admiral rose from his seat and crossed to her, placing his firm hands on her shoulders. “You look fine,” he said against her ear.

“I know it’s silly,” she replied, a smile that was not quite right tipped him off. A gentle squeeze on her shoulder brought her around to confession, “When you mentioned Earth…” he watched her take a moment to gather her mind around impossible thoughts, “They are clearly not from Earth. Which begs the question where are they from, who are they, and what kind of world have we just walked into?”

A knock on the doorframe cut off Adama before he could continue.

“Come in,”

The curtains pushed apart and the first person to appear in the doorway was Lee, he stepped aside quickly to allow two more people to enter the room. The first was a man with a squarish jaw, wide set eyes that seemed to have seen everything before, and the most notable thing about his dress was the long brown coat that swept down to his calves. Following directly behind him was a dark skinned woman with a wild mane of curls and full lips; much like the man she dressed primarily in red and brown. “I would like to present,” Lee spoke up, “Captain Malcolm Reynolds and Zoë Alleyne Washburne.” He nodded to the newcomers he had escorted from the landing bay, he then nodded towards his father and the President, “Admiral William Adama and President Laura Roslin.”

“Captain,” Roslin said stepping forward, extending her hand in greeting, “It’s a pleasure to put a face to the name.”

He grasped her hand in a firm shake, “Likewise.”

“I apologize for the… somewhat cramped accommodations, but I thought this may be a more comfortable setting than the press room,” she said, “Less formal.”

“You are a group of refugees and you have members of the press?” Zoë remarked, voice even but eyebrow raised.

“Well, we’re still a society,” Adama spoke his first words of the meeting, “The civilians will do as they wish.”

“Never thought the Verse was goin’ to be throwin’ me any more surprises,” Mal remarked as he paced around the room taking stock of the presidential quarters. “I’ve been to the verge of the black more than a few times, and I could swear all of what was out there was a lot of nothing.”

“And yet here we are,” Roslin replied.

“I take it you haven’t always been livin’ on these ships.” He replied, helping himself to a seat. “Since we’re takin’ such a friendly approach to this meeting, mind indulgin’ me with your story?”

Taking a cue, the others all took up more comfortable positions, Zoë in a chair beside Mal, Lee leaning against the wall, and Adama and Roslin side by side on her bed. “If it’s not too much trouble,” Roslin pressed, “You seem to know something about Earth.”

Mal leaned back in his chair, crossing his right ankle over his left knee, “Indulge me.”

A compelling story by anyone’s standards- human kind endeavored to make life a bit easier, putting their faith in technology only to have their creations turn on them. Years of war followed by four decades of peace and without warning or expectation, the bombs began to fall. All that was left of a once great civilization was a handful of ships on the run from their own creations, which were determine to wipe them out. The first source of relief came in form of an uninhabited planet, and though they tried as hard as they could to settle and make a life, their past caught up with them. They fought back against the machines that took over their lives and ran away, traveling ever since in search of the rest of the human race. Just hours ago they found they would never truly escape their past, and that the cylons were among them and in need of their help, leading to a tentative alliance not even a day old.

When Adama and Roslin had finished their tale, Adama observed that both Malcolm and Zoë had less tension about them. “Beautiful tale,” Captain Reynolds said as he glanced over at the warrior woman and a silent communication passed between them.

Adama watched the glance that passed between the two and folded his hands in his lap, “You two, you’re former military yourself aren’t you?”

Zoë’s hand subconsciously drifted towards the bootlace tied around her neck.

Mal on the other hand, simply gazed towards the uniformed man, “Keen observational skills you’ve got there, Admiral.”

“It seems,” Adama interjected, “That you have quite the tale of your own.”

Before anyone else could speak, Lee cut in. “When we first contacted you, you mentioned the Alliance. Or, rather, you were worried that we might be Alliance. What exactly-”

“Get any closer to the central planets and you’ll find out.” Zoë replied.

Mal uncrossed his legs and leaned forward resting his elbows on his knees. “If we’re gonna talk about the Alliance, we’d best start with talking about Earth-that-was…”

\---

Helo was crouched by the table, wiping a bit of algae from Hera’s cheek, “Well you’re just a messy eater today.” That’s when the knock came. Giving his daughter a quick kiss on the top of the head, he rose to his feet and opened the door to his quarters to find Kara standing in the doorway.

She seemed for a moment like she was searching his face, as though some secret was written there. After a second, she gathered her breath, “Hey.” It was more of a sigh than a greeting.

“Long day?” he asked in a tone that smirked, and it was enough to start a smile on her face.

“Oh yeah.”

He stepped back from the doorway to let her inside before closing the hatch behind her. He watched her scan the room, her eyes landing on Hera and then sweeping the rest of what could possibly make a casual suburban life, was it not set up on a warship. “Sharon’s not here,” he said, causing Kara to turn towards him, whites of her eyes showing just a bit. Frowning slightly, he continued, “She flew the Old Man and the President over to _Colonial One_ to meet with… whoever it is from that ship.”

“Oh, yeah. That.” With those words Kara slumped into a chair, “Just a few hours ago we were having a standoff with the baseship, and I’m running to the launch bay to stop Lee from airlocking people, because my Viper started picking up signals from Earth and now, just before we jump, this ridiculously small transport ship shows up with gods know who on board, and… it’s just a lot for one day.”

Frowning, Hera reached over and gave Kara a pat on the knee. The earnest look of concern in her young eyes was enough to bring a smile to Kara’s face once more. “What is it about you Agathons that always manages to cheer me up?” she beamed towards the young girl who couldn’t help but beam in return. Ruffling the young girl’s hair Kara pushed herself to her feet and crossed over towards Helo.

“So, what do you think is going on over-”

“Sam’s a Cylon.” She cut him off in a hushed voice. She cast a glance over her shoulder and saw that Hera had picked up some paper and crayons and was drawing, not hanging on every word the grownups were talking about.

“Ah,” he replied, giving a nod as the pieces clicked into place in his mind.

“I told him…” she shut her eyes and shook her head, “I told him if I ever found out he was a Cylon I’d put a bullet between his eyes.”

He wasn’t sure what she expected to hear. Did she expect him to scold her? To be told from the spouse of a Cylon that she was a horrible person for being unable to deal with the revelation? Truth be told, he hadn’t handled it that well at first. “Do you want to?”

Letting out a deep sigh, all she could do was shake her head. “No… I don’t… I don’t know why I don’t…”

“Because he’s still your husband. After you’ve gone through so much with him… Does it really matter that much?” Helo asked.

“I’m just… having a hard time getting my brain around it. How did you… when you found out about Sharon… how did…?”

Helo just smiled, “I love her. Who she is is more important than what she is.”

Kara ran her hands through her hair from her temples to the back of her head and letting out a heavy sigh before allowing her arms to drop to her sides. “Thanks.”

“Maybe we should start a group,” Helo mused, “Cylon Spouses Anonymous… something like that.”

\---

Adama felt the need for a stiff drink.

_Why are we as a people worth saving?_

It dawned on him that humanity always seemed to self-destruct. It was their own foolishness that forced the thirteen tribes to leave Kobol all those millennia ago.

Earth-That-Was. It had been gone long before their journey began, thousands of years ago the planet had become uninhabitable, used up by the people who had lived there. The people of Earth set out to terraform the planets; create colonies, homes.

_There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become people. _

Somewhere along the line, this had been forgotten. It started out as a centralized government of just a few core planets, but they sought to expand their rule over all the colonies. Yet, there was a group that did not believe that a single government should control all the planets, that they should be free to rule themselves.

War broke out.

Freedom lost.

And this was the world they had found.

“Now, I’m a bit biased as you can imagine,” Mal continued, “You can keep goin’, let the Alliance find you, hell you can seek them out your own selves, but I don’t reckon they’re going to take too kindly to 40,000 refuges just showin’ up out of the black.”

Lee’s gazed was fixed at some place on the wall, over the heads of anyone in attendance at this gathering, “So this is the end of the line…”

“We spent so long searching,” Roslin said in a soft voice, mostly to herself, “We didn’t stop to think what would happen when we actually found it…”

Those words spoken, the room descended into a hush. The captain and his first mate continued to engage in their silent communication as Adama observed the wheels spinning in the President’s mind. “Is it even possible to hide all of our citizens on these planets?”

“Madam President?” Lee asked, his attention suddenly snapped back into the circle.

“You said it yourself, Mr. Adama. This is the end of the line. This is civilization.” She spoke, her voice calm and resolved.

Lee stepped forward, “We are talking about subjecting our people to spending the rest of their lives in a government that they did not elect, did not ask for.”

“And what do you think would happen if we turned away now?” She asked, rising to her feet to meet his opposition. “We could travel for another thirty years and never find another habitable planet.” She watched as the realization sunk in over the younger man. “Call an emergency meeting of the Quorum. We will need everyone involved in creating our plan of action.”

He gave a solemn nod, “Yes, Madam President.” With those words he excused himself from the room, and the echoes of his footsteps in the hall faded shortly thereafter.

“Captain Reynolds.” Adama spoke for the first time since the words that-was were uttered. “Whatever decision we make, it is clear we are going to need someone who knows these planets.” On some unspoken cue, both men rose to their feet. “I intend to have the fleet retain position for now. Would you do us the favor of remaining with us for the time being? We could use your experience.” He extended a tentative hand.

After a moment of pensive silence, Mal gripped his hand and delivered a firm shake. “Glad to be of service. I believe you know how to get in touch with us.”

“Actually, Captain.” Roslin spoke. “I was hoping you would attend the meeting of the Quorum. They can be obnoxious political vultures, but they do need to make an informed decision.”

Before Reynolds could reply to the sentence, Zoë interjected. “A word in private?”

“Pardon us,” Mal said, as the Browncoats stepped out into the hallway.

\---

“Sir,” she said in a hushed tone, “Are you sure it’s wise getting involved in their politics?”

Mal cast a glance back towards the President’s quarters. “After our last little run in with the Alliance I’m thinkin’ it best we lay low for a little while. We might as well; take some time to get Serenity in top condition. We could probably barter for supplies. It could prove to be a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

Her gaze narrowed, “That’s not the whole reason and you know I know it.”

Mal got that look on his face, that one she knew from battle for so long ago. “We lost our war and our world ended.”

“Sir, this is not our war.” She had to say it just to later say that she had, but Zoë knew that there was no changing his mind. The pair turned on heel and rejoined the Colonials.

“I would be happy to join you,” Reynolds said, with something of a bow towards Laura.

She smiled graciously in return, “You have no idea how grateful we are, Captain. Also, if it wouldn’t be too much of a problem. After meeting with the representatives, I’d very much like to get to know your crew, since it seems we will be spending some time together.”

“I suppose in light of our new accord that can be arranged.” Mal replied. “By the by, do you have someone that could take a look at our engines?”

 

\--End Chapter--


	2. Chapter 2

The meeting with the political vultures left Roslin feeling like a picked over carcass; in fact she felt quite relieved, on the shuttle ride over to _Serenity_, that she would be judged by people who were not inflated, self-righteous so-called representatives of the people. Hours of yelling, swearing, and threats both thinly veiled and not concealed at all. Some vague plan to split up the ships, send one at a time to some planet, and get their people settled was finally struck. It was a plan that would take months, months sure to be filled with more yelling, swearing, and threats. Roslin’s head throbbed at the mere thought of it.

The ride was shorter than she had thought it would be, that or her thoughts had been far too consuming, because she was suddenly aware of a light jolt as the shuttle docked on the port side and locked into place. She took a steeling breath and glanced around at the familiar faces that had come to the ship- Bill, Lee, Chief, Kara.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” Mal announced, “Welcome to _Serenity_.”

He opened the hatch and led his guests out onto the catwalk and up a flight of stairs to a large mess hall, which seemed almost familial in its arrangement. Very much unlike the mess hall aboard _Galactica_ made even more familial by the presence of an older man, dark skinned and grey haired, engaged in conversation at the table in the center of the room with a wispy girl with long dark hair. Settled in a chair off to the side of the room a man, with the overall bearing of a gorilla, sat, ankle crossed over his knee as he polished a very large gun.

“Jayne, Book, we’ve got company,” the captain announced. Not that he had needed to announce it; they’d drawn the focus of everyone as they’d entered the room. Mal nodded towards the gorilla man in the corner, “That there is Jayne, hired mercenary. Don’t look him in the eyes, he takes it as a challenge.”

“Very funny,” Jayne sneered, and resumed polishing the weapon.

The grey haired man rose from the table and crossed to the group, “This here is Shepherd Book.”

“A man of the cloth,” Roslin observed, “I have a feeling we will have a lot to talk about,” She replied, holding out her hand, “Laura Roslin.”

Book grasped her hand in a firm shake, “A pleasure to meet you.” He then turned his gaze towards her company. “I see we have many distinguished people with us today.”

The motions of introduction were carried out; only to be interrupted for a moment when they realized the dark haired girl had risen from her chair and was circling Kara was an intense gaze and an amused smile. Jayne announced that River had a case of the crazies, something she took an offense to. Before the situation could spiral out of hand, Mal ushered his guests towards the bridge.

\---

There was a kind of light about Kara’s face from the moment they reached the bridge it could even be described as a glow as she absorbed everything and listened eagerly to the pilot, Wash, as he introduced himself and beamed proudly about the fact that he was married to Zoë. After a few moments of conversation, Kara waved the others on, telling them to continue to tour the ship without her. “Once a pilot, always a pilot.” Lee whispered in her ear before slipping from the room with the others.

“Captain Kara Thrace.” She introduced herself. “I’m CAG on _Galactica_.”

“CAG?” Wash asked raising an eyebrow.

“Commander of the Air Group…” she prompted, however this didn’t clarify it for him, “Head… pilot… person.” She replied, his face burst into smile as, for him, some kind of instant fellow pilot bond had formed and he dove directly into exploring this newfound connection.

“So how did you get into flying?” he asked.

She lowered herself into the co-pilot’s chair, “Well, I used to be an athlete,” she started, indulging in the bond and slightly surprised that she was opening up this way. She turned her gaze out to the stars and the fleet visible beyond them. “I made my way into the Fleet Academy on a sports scholarship, and I, uh, broke my leg.” Her face puckered at the sour memory. “Couldn’t play anymore, and that’s about the time that I really found my calling, flying, and went on to flight school from there. What about you?”

Wash reclined in his chair with a nostalgic smile on his face, “I was born on a planet with pollution so thick you couldn’t even see the stars. I decided to become a pilot so that I could finally see the sky.” He sat forward a bit with a smirk on his face, “I graduated second in my class.” He bounced his eyebrows.

The playful competitive spirit bubbled up in Kara quite quickly, she matched his posture and smirk, “They say I’m the greatest fighter pilot to ever get in the cockpit.” She paused and in some moment of realization, every bit of her cockiness slipped away. “I guess that’s over now too… going into hiding… settling…”

Wash shook his head, “No way. You always have the sky. No one can take that away from you.”

She sat back, taking a moment to survey the buttons, the readouts. In a voice full of hushed wonder she spoke. “How do you fly this thing?”

\---

She was a ball of pure fury in a pink shirt and grease stained jumpsuit. How dare Mal bring someone else aboard to look at the engines, the ship was her girl and she wasn’t about to have anyone else lay their grubby hands all over her. The tirade went on for a good few minutes before she caught the Chief in her sights. There was something, something she couldn’t quite place, but something that intrigued her nonetheless, and offered to show him how Serenity worked, but mostly as a guise til she could figure out what it was about him that was so intriguing.

“Kaywinnet Lee Frye,” she introduced herself, once the others had left. “Call me Kaylee.”

“Kaylee…” he repeated to himself, in a moment of darkness, “My late wife… her name was Cally.”

Kaylee grinned, “That’s all well and good but I still don’t know your name.”

“Tyrol… Galen Tyrol.” He asked, taken aback slightly by her grin. “So, wanna show me around?”

\---

There was something about her, just the ease of her nature and the passion with which she spoke about every little detail about the ship. Every little component was cared for and revered, she spoke with such affection for every inhabitant of the engine room, and finished in a rant about those, some curse word he could not understand, who dared to call the ship a piece of junk. Before he knew it two whole hours had passed.

“If you want to see some junk,” He said with a smile, “You should come over to the _Galactica_ sometime. Most of our equipment is more than 50 years old. Our Vipers are five models outdated, it’s a hell of a time keeping them flying.”

“Must be fun.” She replied dreamily.

A light laugh pushed its way forward. “I don’t know if I’d call it fun. But it’s a labor of love… What?” He asked noticing the pensive gaze that seemed to tear right through him.

“I think I finally figured it out,” Kaylee said with a triumphant smirk. “I know just what you are.”

“What do you mean?”

“I knew there was something different about you the second I saw you, but I couldn’t figure out why. Then you started talking about labors of love, and when I’m down here alone with _Serenity_, I was just thinking that she lets me know what’s wrong with her so I can fix her. Machines have a way of talkin’ to me,” she beamed, “And you, Mr. Tyrol, are definitely some kind of machine.”

He was stunned. The truth had been nothing but a horror to anyone else, but here this woman was beaming with pride and almost joy that she had discovered this about him. A glow of wonder was all about her, which only urged him to speak. “Cylon… my race… we’re called Cylons. I only actually found out what I was about six months ago.”

“Cylon,” she replied trying out the new word on her tongue. Something about the way she said it took the edge away from the word. “Shiny!” A beat passed. “So, can I come over to _Galactica_ sometime and take a look around your engine room?”

“Yeah,” he said, a rush of relief running through him. “I really want to show you the FTL drives, see what you think. It doesn’t look like you have that technology aboard _Serenity_.”

“FTL?”

“Faster than light,” he clarified and smiled as her face burst into a wide grin.

“Sounds like a date, mister.”

\---

  
“Down through here we have the cargo bay,” Mal said, feeling entirely too much like he was leading people through a museum.

Lee surveyed the room. “That’s a lot of storage space. This is a transport ship, what exactly do you transport, Captain?”

“Odds ‘n’ ends,” he replied. “We do odd jobs for people with jobs that need doin’.” The sentence was incredibly final, and no one wasn’t quite up to challenging him at this juncture.

Through another door, Mal led them into the infirmary. A doctor- Captain Reynolds introduced him as Simon- was busy going through an inventory of some kind, and seemed none too pleased to have a group of strangers brought into his workspace.

“And yes, he’s always like this.” Mal said the moment that Simon had gone back to his work.

“I am not deaf, you know,” he snapped back at the Captain, and for the first time he took a moment to actually look at the people accompanying Reynolds. His eyes fell on Roslin. “Medullary carcinoma?” he asked.

  
A grave smile appeared on her face. "Something like that, Doctor. If you'd like the details, I do have my medical records with Doctor Cottle back on _Galactica_..."

Simon ushered her to take a seat, but she looked back at the Adamas with some slight apprehension. Bill stepped forward, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder and Lee stayed a few paces back, giving a slight nod. Taking a hard swallow, she followed the doctor and took a seat.

“What treatments have you been receiving?” he asked, digging up a drawer in search of a notepad.

“Well,” she thought it would be best to leave out the blood of a half-cylon baby as part of the cure, “I have been undergoing a series of doloxan treatments, as well as taking chamalla extract.”

The doctor stopped his search and turned to the woman with a bemused expression covering his features. “I’m beginning to think I’m only going to need your diagnostic records.”

“Why is that?”

“I am completely unaware of any of those treatments,” he replied, voice tinted with shame.

Adama was the only one to speak. “It’s only to be expected. Medicine from another end of the universe, after all.” He turned towards her. “It means there are different treatments, ones that might even be more effective. Isn’t that right, Doctor?” She could see it in his eyes, that as much as he knew how tired she was he was still going to be selfish today.

“Yes. It will be a lot of work, creating an entirely new treatment plan; but if you would allow me, and I do hope you will, I would find it a privilege to take you on as a patient. It beats spending my time bandaging up some of the apes around this ship.”

She sat in silence collecting her thoughts, which whirled in circles; life was happening at such a rapid pace. Life was happening. “Well… this is a time of new beginnings.”

 

\--End Chapter--


	3. Chapter 3

Settling the fleet had been no easy task. Inconspicuous routes to a planet had to be plotted for each ship, and travel had to be done at sublight so as not to arouse the suspicions of the Alliance. Ships’ captains were briefed on their destinations and given information on some shadier characters that could forge papers for the passengers of their ships, citizens were educated about the basics of the planets that were to be their new homes. They would be able to move later if they so desired, but the primary goal was to get everyone down to the planets.

The_ Virgon Express_ was sent to Verbena. The _Astral Queen_ took refugee on the rim planet Whittier. The _Thera Sita_ made a landing on Salisbury. So on and so forth the number of ships dipped, and once they were gone they could no longer maintain contact with the fleet. To do so would be to put them all in jeopardy.

Life aboard _Galactica_ had become drastically different.

\---

To say that Zoë had been apprehensive on her first trip to _Galactica_ would be a grave understatement. It had been Mal’s idea. One week after they had made initial contact with _Galactica_, travel between the two ships was becoming more common. There were days when Zoë would come to see her husband, to find him teaching Captain Thrace the finer points of flying a transport ship. She would often find Laura Roslin aboard _Serenity_ as well, as she began undergoing treatment under Simon’s care. And it wasn’t an incredibly rare sight for Lee Adama in the dining room with Book engaged in civilized but clearly impassioned conversation. Mal insisted it was time that they pay a visit to their new allies.

Her first icy appearance at the entry of the mess hall had drawn all eyes towards her. She was fully aware of the soft chorus of whispers that bounced around the room, even though everyone was trying so hard not to appear to be gawking outright. Helo was the first one to speak up as he shuffled the deck of hexagonal cards, “Want to be dealt in?”

“What is this game?” Zoë asked, as she took up residence in a seat Sharon dragged over.

“Triad,” Kara replied.

“Never heard of it.”

Helo began to deal out the cards. “We’ll go easy on you this round so we can show you how it works, but after that all bets are off.”

With a raised eyebrow Zoë picked up the five cards in front of her. Sharon, who was sitting this particular hand out, leaned over and began to explain the basics of the game.

Zoë won the first hand, at which point Helo called off going easy on her.

She won the second hand too.

“Beginner’s luck,” Kara insisted.

After the third hand, Zoë decided to quit while she was ahead and left _Galactica_ with a smile on her face.

Within a few weeks, Zoë’s presence at the card games was not only routine, but expected. She and the pilots engaged in boisterous laughter and swapped war stories, ship stories.

She had missed the company of soldiers.

\---

No one batted an eye nowadays when they found Kaylee Frye wandering the deck, checking out the Mark IIs. She’d become something of a fixture on deck. In three days' worth of visits to _Galactica_, she could practically take apart a Raptor and put it back together; she’d also taken two Vipers, which were out of commission and had them back in working order.

Less than a week after first contact with _Serenity_, she was flying in on a shuttle almost every day. After two weeks, she was spending the nights aboard _Galactica_ as well. Some of the knuckle draggers began to joke that Chief and the strange mechanic girl were getting it on.

Well, they were jokes until the morning a few of the deck hands saw the pair attempting to sneak out of the engine room unnoticed, glowing the tell-tale glow of two people who had just had the best frak of their lives.

\---

In a place like Dogsville, a little beauty and elegance stood out like a nova. Among the ragged, the forgotten, the starving, the ones waiting for transport off the ship, Inara Serra looked like a goddess dressed in gold silks. To Gaius’s mind, she looked like the sun, brightening the room. Well, let’s face it, he always had a weak spot for beautiful women.

“Excuse me, Miss,” he began as he brushed past a mother and her child, “You seem quite lost.”

She gave a soft and elegant laugh. “Well ‘lost’ implies that I have somewhere to be. I’m wandering.”

As the pair conversed, he led her around the encampment and - partially as a joke, partially to show off - decided to show her Deck 8 where his cultists had resided; they were among the first people to be sent to planets from _Galactica_.

“I understand _Serenity_ has aboard… a mechanic, a doctor, several soldiers, a mercenary, which all makes fine sense,” Gaius began, “but how does a woman like yourself come to travel with these people?”

“A mutual business arrangement. Being aboard _Serenity_ has given me the chance to expand my client base, and for M-… Captain Reynolds, having a Companion aboard allows him access to some more… elite locations. Though the past few weeks have not been so good for business.” Inara adjusted the shawl that draped so elegantly across her shoulders.

It gave him a bit of a shiver just watching the grace of her movements. “Terribly sorry for that.”

She gave a light shrug and a bit of a distance entered her eyes, “It’s also giving me the chance to see the universe.” He was about to press on for further information when she spoke again, “How does someone considered to be such a great mind of his time end up with both a religious cult and a hand in caring for the destitute?”

“Ah well that is a long story that involves my impoverished childhood, clawing my way up from nothing, eventually becoming president and you know this story is just far too long, suffice it to say, I feel that this is something I am meant to be doing. Something in God’s plan and… would you excuse me for one moment?”

He’d practically given himself whiplash at the change of pace in the conversation. After all this time, just the bare glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye was enough to derail him completely. “Caprica!”

He saw her draw back slightly at the sound of his voice, but steadied herself as he drew nearer. She swallowed hard, as though fighting the fluttering of butterflies in her stomach, or possibly bats. “Gaius. I came here looking for you.”

“You have?” his voice clocked in about an octave higher than normal, before returning to it’s normal pitch, “You have?”

“Yes, there’s something I need to talk to you about.” It seemed to take a lot of courage, but she reached out, taking his hand in hers.

“Of course, anything,” he urged, giving her hand a gentle squeeze.

Her free hand rested softly against her stomach. Gaius caught this out of the corner of his eye and the light clicked on in his mind. He began to shake his head and withdrew his hand from her grip.

That look in his eyes, sheer panic, the same one that filled his face when the bombs went off three years ago. “Who?” was the only thing he could bring himself to ask.

\---

She was sitting at a table scribbling cautiously with a blue crayon when the big girl walked into the daycare center. Hera had seen many children about her own age and they were small, like her; she had seen her mommy and her daddy and their friends, and they were all big. This girl was not big and she was not small.

She moved prettily, Hera concluded, watching her walk around the daycare, and she looked like she needed a friend. Hera pushed herself up from her seat, taking her paper with her. She crossed to where the big girl was sitting, playing with a set of blocks.

She turned them over in her hands, examining the edges, and the lack of corners. “One, two, three, four… teen.”

It was then that Hera tapped her on the shoulder. The big girl held up the block, “This is incomplete.”

Extending a token of friendship, Hera held out the paper to the big girl, expecting a smile. The other big people smiled when she gave them drawings. The big girl didn’t. She began to shake and screamed before she fled the room.

Hera frowned. She had thought they were beautiful blue hands.

\---

“You know what?” Gaius shouted to himself alone in the privacy of the abandoned temple. After his conversation with Caprica threatened to turn into a fight, he excused himself from her, then from Inara, and took off to find himself some solitude. “I am so, so tired of hearing about God’s plan.” He threw his arms into the air in protest.

Solitude was not something he was allowed to have.

She reclined against the cushions wearing the red dress. “Surprising considering how this place was built on your words of God’s love for every person.” He liked the red dress. She rose to her feet, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, “You’re just saying that out of grief.”

“I should just be glad for her, then.” It wasn’t a statement, a question, or a conclusion. Just a string of words. “Well of course. It’s a miracle isn’t it?” Gaius pulled out of her grip, “First pure cylon child conceived in the entire universe! She should feel so _blessed_,” he practically spat the word as a sneer began to decorate his lips, “And I’m sure Saul Tigh will be the most _fantastic_ father. In fact-”

“Gaius Baltar?” a voice asked. Gaius spun so quickly to face the voice that it nearly knocked him off his feet to see the unfamiliar man in grey religious garb.

“Yes? Hello.” He replied.

“My name is Derrial Book.” He introduced himself. “I’ve heard quite a bit about you from Laura Roslin.” Gaius could feel a fountain of dread bubbling up inside him. Something the other man must have seen because his tone switched to a calming one. “She’s been aboard _Serenity_ seeing Dr. Tam, and we have been discussing religion to keep her mind off treatments, and your name came up,” he paused for a moment, “several times in fact. I hope this isn’t too much of an intrusion.”

Gaius shook his head, “No, no, not at all. You just,” he paused feeling her hands on his shoulders, “caught me in a bit of a crisis of faith.”

“Oh?” the preacher asked.

“God’s plan… it doesn’t always go as you would hope,” he replied, the sound of her satisfied sigh brushing against his ear.

Book merely smiled, “That’s often the nature of these things.”

\---

“I’ve almost got it, sir,” Dee’s voice echoed slightly through CIC. The room, which had once been the nerve center of the entire ship, was now abandoned save for a few souls. The last civilian ship had left to settle just an hour before. All that remained of the Colonial Fleet was _Galactica_ herself, with_ Serenity_ docked on the starboard landing bay.

“Good, let me know when it’s done,” Adama said, just as he heard the clomping of boots entering the room. He turned to see the tall form of Malcolm Reynolds. “Good morning, Captain.”

“Mornin’,” he replied. “Lookin’ a bit bare in here.”

Adama couldn’t do much beyond nod in agreement as he surveyed the space. “That’s part of the reason I asked to meet with you this morning. As you know, the settling mission is winding to close, and…”

“And a ship like _Galactica_ don’t have a place in the ‘verse, does she?” Mal finished for him so he wouldn’t have to utter those words.

Adama’s eyes focused on committing every surface, every scratch to memory, because soon…

“She’s a good ship,” Mal concluded.

“That she is,” he replied with a heartbroken laugh. It echoed around the room before the silence settled.

“Sir,” Dee’s voice broke the silence, Adama turned to see the officer beaming with a kind of smile he hadn’t seen in a long time, “I’ve got it.”

“Get the word out,” he said. “Dismissed.” She saluted before leaving the room with a bit of a bounce to her step.

Without preamble of any kind, Mal spoke up, “There’s a moon.” Adama turned to face him. “Orbitin’ around a planet on the farthest edge of the rim. Not a soul ventures out there. Lots of mountains, valleys. If you want somethin’ to stay lost, I reckon it’d be the best place to hide her. We got plenty of room in the cargo hold right now, can take you all aboard, drop you off wherever you wanna go.”

“I can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve done.” Adama turned to him.

“Don’ mention it.” Mal replied, “I’ve never been fond of leavin’ a man behind.”

Adama extended his hand, “You’re a good man, Captain Reynolds.”

A firm shake greeted his, “Just Mal, Admiral.”

“I think, under the circumstances, it’s just Bill from now on.”

 

\--End--


	4. Chapter 4

Lee lay in bed, with his alarm clock blaring away for a good five minutes before he could be bothered to roll over and switch it off. Shoving the covers away, he pushed himself to his feet and shuffled over to the window. Drawing the curtains open, the apartment glowed gold with early morning sunlight, and the sounds of the small shuttles buzzing through the air flooded him.

He’d never lived on his own for more than a few weeks before.  In his youth, he was home with his mother and his brother; from there he went into college where his boisterous roommates kept life energized and frantic. After college he joined the military; from basic training through flight school, his fellow soldiers constantly surrounded him; no, he’d never truly been alone in his life. Then here he was, on a planet he’d never known existed, in an apartment in a city, where no one knew of the Colonies of Kobol, the Cylon holocaust, all the billions of lives lost, or the struggles of the survivors. It was so strange to get up in the morning without hearing the voices of those near and dear to you.

Routine was good. It kept order, kept things in their place, and kept him from realizing just how lost he felt. He started every day with a round of pushups and sit-ups, and hit the shower. After a wash and a shave, he’d go to the small corner kitchen and heat up the coffee left over from whenever he had actually made it. By nine thirty-four on any weekday morning, he was in a clean, pressed suit and on his way to the large office building in the center of the city where he worked now as a law clerk.

For the first few months on Ariel, as he walked to work, he was positive he’d seen Brendan Costanza on the streets, just a glimpse of a face in the crowd; the man even had a child with him, about two years old. It only took a few encounters to realize it was someone who just looked like him. Not that he’d had any kind of strong connection to Costanza, just this small hope that out of this huge galaxy, he would have the pleasure of seeing a fellow former pilot. Or any other Colonials, really. On one occasion, he could have sworn he’d seen Romo Lampkin brush past him as he walked.

It wasn’t until he was actually at work that he finally caught sight of the calendar. He was surprised it had even slipped his mind, because there was today circled in bright red marker on his desk, and the evening was not coming soon enough. Every second became a minute, every minute an hour. He’d sort through his files, but wasn’t quite aware of just what the words on the pages were.

It would have been better if he had a meeting with a client, or with his boss, or if he got some sudden call that a prominent client had gotten him or herself arrested and were in immediate need of legal counsel. The firm rarely had cases like that. In some small way, he yearned for those five days, where every 33 minutes they had to jump for their lives. A time when the decisions made each second meant life or death; every moment alive meant something, was cherished.

Between now and the time the office closed, fourteen jumps would have been made.

At six o’clock, rather than taking his usual route back home, Lee Adama made his way towards the station to get a shuttle to the other side of Ariel City.

\---

“It’s just not quite long enough to do anything with it,” Laura said with a frown as she smoothed her hair in several different directions, trying to force it to cooperate. Of course one can’t threaten to airlock one’s own hair to coerce it into compliance. She’d kept her hair long for years and just could not adjust to this transition.

It had been Dr. Tam that insisted upon Inara bringing the former president to Ariel. He could no longer provide medical services, but he knew of several brilliant doctors on the planet, and would not entrust her health care to anyone else. Months of grueling treatment finally paid off when her doctor finally announced her cancer to be in complete remission. Her hair was had grown back considerably, about a shade redder than it had been before.

Quietly, Bill withdrew his nose from his book and set it aside on the table beside his chair. He pulled himself out of the chair and crossed to where Laura stood in front of the mirror, angrily tousling her hair to and fro. “You look beautiful,” he said, wrapping his arms around her waist.

She eyed him with skeptical fondness, “You’re just saying that.”

He gave a full-bellied laugh and kissed her on the cheek.

Most of the neighbors knew them as the old married couple in 1142; they would go out on evenings and weekends to the museums and the theatre, or just to the park to watch the sunsets together; no one who saw them in passing would ever believe it if you told them she used to be President and he was the Admiral of a fleet of refugees. They never brought their secrets outside of the apartment. That was the reason Bill rarely left the apartment without her.

He was supposed to have retired three years ago; that’s what he’d thought when they first moved into their apartment in Ariel City. It was an excuse; others included how he had to take care of things around the apartment while Laura was going through treatment and that there just weren’t any jobs to be found. When Laura was finally on the mend, she took a job teaching at a local school, pulling in enough credits to support them both.

She relaxed against his touch, “Did you ever once think… dream… dread… that this is where we’d be?”

Before the conversation could go further, they were cut short by the electronic tone of someone ringing at the door. The medium-sized screen, which had been broadcasting Alliance-filtered news and commercials, switched over to show Lee Adama standing patiently in the doorway. Bill gave Laura another quick kiss on the cheek before going to answer the door.

“Hi, Dad,” Lee said. It wasn’t that Lee never visited them. Quite the contrary, he usually came a few times a month; they were family after all.

“Hello, Son.” Bill pulled him into an embrace before Lee entered 1142, and he closed the door behind him.

There was something about this day that made this surreal domestic life even more surreal.

“Good evening, Laura.” _Madam President_. Lee said, “You look lovely today.”

She tsked and adjusted the light silk jacket she wore. “You are quite the kiss up,” _Captain Apollo_, “Just like your father.”

“Something smells good,” he commented, setting his briefcase on the coffee table.

“Mmm.” Laura headed towards the kitchen, “Bill’s been cooking all day.”

Lee opened his briefcase and withdrew a bottle of dark red liquor. “I hope you don’t mind, I brought this. It’s…” he took a deep breath. “It’s four years old, not the most aged wine, but I thought it might be appropriate. Do you-” Bill had already brought out three wine glasses and set them out on the table. Lee smiled. “Apparently you do.”

“May I do the honors?” Bill asked as fetched an old-fashioned corkscrew from the kitchen. The bottle of wine opened with a soft pop as the cork released. He lifted the bottle filling each of the three glasses to three-quarters full before setting the bottle back down on the table. Lee and Laura each took a glass following his lead.

“Four years ago,” Lee began. “Four years ago we lost the colonies. Four years ago we began to find the way to Earth. Three years ago we settled on New Caprica, and two years ago we escaped. Exactly one year ago today we…” His voice trailed off.

“We left the one home we all knew hidden in a valley on a moon, and tried to start a new life,” Laura finished for him.

After a brief pause, Bill spoke, “To _Galactica_.”

“To _Galactica_,” they echoed, and they all drank.

Adama looked into his half-emptied glass, voice barely above a whisper. “So say we all.”

Lee considered the apartment as he sipped his wine. “Do you think we’ll ever stop hiding?” he asked. “One year… and I haven’t heard from anyone. Kara, Helo,” he paused, “Dee… Gods, I think at this point I’d be happy to hear from Gaius Baltar.” The thought prompted him to finish off the glass of wine. 

“Perhaps, but now it’s still too soon.” Bill took up residence in his chair once again, missing the knowing look that Laura cast his way. “Especially for us, security is so tight on this planet, we’re lucky we were able to get here in the first place. I don’t want to know what would happen if the Alliance decided to round us all up. It’s the last thing any of us need.”

Lee picked up the bottle and poured himself another glass, examining it as though examining a crystal ball. “I know. I just… it’s like losing family.” He allowed himself another sip. “I wonder how the others are celebrating.”

\---

Kara slammed the shot glass against the bar, feeling the burn of cheap alcohol tear down her throat. That was number five. Jayne beside her was only on shot number four. “Come on, lightweight!” she heckled.

From a table in the corner of the Maidenhead bar, Galen and Kaylee watched in something akin to horror, certain that this night was going to end in blood and tears. Or at least blood.

_Serenity_ had docked on Beaumonde for a twofold purpose. One, Mal’s crew had a job that needed doing. Two, it gave Tyrol the chance to see Kara and Anders for the anniversary of the day they left _Galactica._ They met at the spaceport and Kara almost didn’t recognize him. Tyrol had trimmed down a bit, but had let his hair grow out considerably as well; to him, Kara and Anders looked exactly as they had when they parted after his announcement that he was staying aboard _Serenity_. He did notice, however, a look in Kara’s eyes. He wouldn’t call it a crazy look, but perhaps the look of someone cooped up just a bit too long.

Anders had an evening shift at the factory where he worked; it wasn’t as though it was an actual holiday that he could use as an excuse to get out. Nevertheless, Kara and Tyrol went out to share a round of drinks, accompanied by Kaylee, who seemed to be glued to him at the hip (amazing how not that long ago they’d been galaxies apart; it seemed since they found each other, they couldn’t stand to have too much distance between them), and Jayne, who was always up for a good round of drinks.

The trouble started during a drunken game of pool after the bartender had the cut the heavy drinkers off. Some guy thought it would be a brilliant idea to grab Kara’s ass, and the first fist to the jaw was not lesson enough. After a few more shots on the pool table, a technical malfunction caused the holographic balls to disappear from play, she slammed the pool cue against the table with an angry growl. That’s when Mr. Grabby decided to make his second attempt at copping a feel.

_“You gorram motherfrakker_!” she screamed, seizing the front of his shirt and sending him sailing through the air, on a direct collision course with an occupied table. The stunned drinkers were quick to retaliate, but it was Jayne who stepped in, jabbing at one with a pool cue.

The bloodbath portion of the evening had begun.

\---

She refused to open her eyes; from the way everything ached, Kara knew that this hangover was going to be a particular bitch. She felt the dull ache of alcohol-drenched muscles, the churning of her stomach and a fantastic throbbing on the side of her head on top of the pounding booze-induced headache.

She felt her body shift as someone else sat down on the bed, and she felt the bittersweet relief of an icepack being pressed against the bruise that had taken up residence on her head. Rather than speak words at Sam, she simply made a grunting noise to indicate that she was awake.

“And good morning to you too,” he replied. Kara responded with some other incoherent noise. “Do you know how not fun it is to come home from work to an empty house, only to have your knocked-out wife carried in ten minutes later?”

Cracking her eyes open, she realized Sam had left the lights off- very thoughtful of him. “Is that what happened? It was a tossup between black out and concussion for a minute there,” she muttered quietly with a smirk resting on her lips.

“Dammit, Kara!” he said, voice clipped trying not to yell around her, but for emphasis he threw himself to his feet.  “This isn’t funny! What the hell were you thinking?”

She somehow managed to get herself into a sitting position. “I don’t remember doing much thinking, actually. Just a lot of ducking and punching.”

Anders just shook his head. “I thought you said you were going to ease up on the drinking.”

Kara gave a shrug of her shoulders. “We were celebrating… mourning… whatever you want to call it. One year, remember?”

“Then what do you call last week? And the week before? Do you need me to count the number of bars you’ve gotten thrown out of? Oh, and don’t even get me started on how about how you can’t hold a steady job. You just spend all of your time-”

“Just stop.” It wasn’t a shout; it wasn’t even an angry sound of any kind. More like a quiet plea. “I don’t want to have this fight again. You know what it means to me.” She said, “I just… I’m not cut out for this kind of life. Sammy, I just… I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

With a sigh, he took a seat next to her on the bed. “I know… it’s hard. It’s hard for me, too. But things aren’t so bad. We’ve got a decent living… we’ve got each other.” He ran his fingers through her chin length hair and gave her a gentle kiss on her forehead. “And we have a game this afternoon.” He smiled. He got to his feet once more. “I’ve got some errands to run but the team’s meeting at the stadium at 4 for some pre-game practice.”

The promise of a little healthy competition helped her start to break through the hangover haze. “I think, with a little coffee, I’ll be as good as new.”

“That’s my girl.” He smiled. “Just so you know, Tyrol and Kaylee crashed on the couch last night, and Jayne is probably still sleeping off his hangover in the bathtub.” Kara grimaced, Anders smirked, and with that he was gone.

It was about a full hour later, before Kara finally dragged herself out of bed and changed out of her clothes, which still reeked of blood, sweat, and spilt alcohol from the night before. Pulling on a pair of cargo pants and a grey tank top, she made her way out into the living room where the dull noise of the morning news and the smell of fresh coffee from the kitchen wafted gently around her.

“Hope you don’t mind,” Tyrol said as she walked into the kitchen. He took a mug from the cabinet and poured her a cup.

“Mind?” she replied. “I could kiss you right now, but the way I feel I think Kaylee’d knock me out for trying, no problem.” She clutched the mug between her hands and drank deep the hot liquid.

“Not like you need another beatin’ upside the head after last night,” Kaylee said from her seat at the small kitchen table, where she munched contently on a strawberry she’d stolen from the fridge.

Kara shuffled towards the table and slumped into the chair across from her, “Yeah, what exactly happened? I’m sort of fuzzy on the details.”

“Five minutes into the bar fight, you took a pool cue to the head.” Tyrol stated flatly as he poured himself another cup of coffee.

“Only five minutes?” She grimaced. “I’ve lost my edge. It’s not like we have the dances anymore.”

“Dances?” Kaylee asked, her eyes alight clearly with thoughts of elegance and fluffy dresses.

Tyrol shook his head, as he joined the ladies at the table. “It was code for boxing matches. Rank didn’t matter; if you had a problem with someone, you’d call them out and kicked their frakking ass.”

“Nothing like a little physical therapy.” Kara took another sip from her mug, before the ghost of memory blazed through her mind and she broke into a grin. “Remember the time the Old Man told you to get your ‘fat, lazy ass,’ into the ring?”

“Beat him to a pulp,” Tyrol beamed in his mid-morning, caffeine-fueled haze.

Kara shook her head, “We should’ve known you were a Cylon right then and there.” She sighed and leaned back in her chair staring up at the ceilings. “Good times.” She gave a bemused frown as she heard her own words; the expression seemed to be contagious as it appeared on Chief’s face as well.

“Hey things ain’t so bad here, are they?” Kaylee asked, mainly to Tyrol who had no choice but to kiss her and assure that they were solid.

“You are the best part of this ‘verse,” he told her. “It’s just… four years ago, we were getting ready to see _Galactica _decommissioned, maybe take some time to spend with our families before taking on a new assignment. Planets, cities, people. All gone now. It’s hard.”

“Well ya’ll are here, and ya’ll are safe,” she said smiling. “That ought be the most impor’nt thing.”

“Oh,” Kara’s brain finally flicked on, “I forgot to tell you. Sam and I’ve been playing, well it’s not quite pyramid, it’s kinda… well it’s not important, but we made the city team a few months ago and we have a game this afternoon, and you guys… and Jayne, if he wakes up, are welcome to come.”

“Shiny!” Kaylee remarked.

“Tightpants gave us the week on planet, unless things go south. They should be done with… well with whatever they’re doing.” Tyrol said before turning to Kaylee, “Do you know what they’re doing?”

“Crime,” she replied nonchalantly. “So, I di’n’t mean to eavesdrop, but I heard you and Sam havin’ a fight ‘bout something this morning.”

With a gulp Kara downed the remainder of her coffee. “Actually, that was something I wanted to talk to you guys about. I have a little… project going. Sam isn’t really thrilled about it, but it’s just…” She pensively stroked the side of her nose with her thumb as she talked. “Something I really need. For myself. And maybe it’s selfish, I don’t actually care that much. But the thing is I need the help of a couple good mechanics. Then I thought the only mechanics I knew were you guys, and I thought I’d settle.” She said with a grin.

“Anythin’ you need doin’, Galen and I will take care of it for ya.” Kaylee beamed, turning to give Tyrol a high five. As their hands met their fingers laced.

Kara stared forlornly into her empty mug. Yup. The hangover was going to be a bitch.

 

\--End Chapter--


	5. Chapter 5

The first thing Sharon heard as she woke up was the soft drumming of rain against the windows, and the not-too-distant crash of ocean waves. She loved the way it smelled; it smelled crisp and clean, like a new beginning; and then she smelled eggs. She opened her eyes to see Helo standing by her side of the bed with a tray. She sat upright, letting the linens fall away from her as she stretched. “I didn’t forget our anniversary, did I?” she asked through a yawn.

Her question was answered by a soft kiss. “No, there’s still three months.” He placed the tray over her lap. “The storm woke me up early. I thought I’d make breakfast for my two favorite girls.”

As if on cue, Hera came bounding into the room, still in her nightgown, a small stuffed animal clutched under her arm. She buried herself under the covers next to her mother. “Good morning, sweetie,” Sharon said with a smile, leaning down to kiss the black curls that stuck out from under the blanket.

Helo crossed to the windows and pulled the curtains open. The day was grey and rainy still, but a light filled the room nonetheless. New Melbourne was mostly made of water, that meant it tended to rain more often that it was sunny, but it was a beautiful planet even so, or at least it was to Karl’s thinking. “I love this weather.”

“Well I suppose any weather is more interesting than no weather at all,” Sharon said around a mouth full of toast. “Better than recycled air. What’s so great about the rain?”

“It was raining when we met,” he said, turning to smile at her.

She laughed. “There was also nuclear fallout and running for our lives… your life.” She paused and wrinkled her nose. “And not bathing.”

Helo took up a seat on the bed and proceeded to tickle the little lump of Hera under the covers. “Maybe, but we also got our beautiful little girl out of all of it.” Hera squealed and squirmed, nearly knocking the glass of juice off of the tray in the process.

Sharon caught the glass before it could spill, smiling as she finished her piece of toast. “Hera, sweetie, why don’t you get dressed for school?”

“Okay, mommy,” she said, hopping off the bed and scurrying from the room. Sharon watched with a smile until her daughter had left the room before the smile quickly faded from her face.

“What’s wrong?” Karl asked, scooting closer to her on the bed.

She sighed. “One year. I mean… it’s wonderful. We’ve made a wonderful life here, but… on New Caprica it took a year for the Cylons to find us. The Ones, Fours, and Fives are still out there somewhere.”

He leaned in, giving her a firm kiss on her forehead. “That’s one of the advantages of living under a totalitarian government that spans multiple star systems. I don’t think they’re really going to let a squadron of Cylons take over. Now,” he said, getting up. “I’m going to get Hera’s breakfast together.”

As he left the room, she set the tray aside, lifted herself from the bed and walked over to the closet to dig for something to wear to work. Pulling the door open, she sorted through the small forest of clothing that dangled from their hangers, pausing when she reached the far corner of the closet. Tucked away behind all the other shirts, untouched for the full year that she had been living in this house was the navy blue jacket with grey piping she’d worn as Athena.

Checking to make sure the bedroom door was closed, she slid the jacket off the hanger and slipped her arms through the sleeves, fingers working quickly to slide the buttons into their proper place. She looked down at herself, feeling the weight of the uniform against her shoulders, sliding her fingers over the thick fabric. Athena felt like a lifetime ago, and it was only when she stopped to think about it that Sharon remembered she’d only been Athena for a little while.

For the longest time she was just an Eight, one of many. Then she was still an Eight, but she was an Eight pretending to be Sharon Valerii. And then there was Helo, and there were those moments that he’d look into her eyes and see Sharon staring back, where she forgot that she wasn’t; and then she was.

She was Sharon- not exactly a person well favored in the fleet. To them she was a thing, a prisoner, locked away in a cell for over a year, even after taking the last name Agathon. Only after all that did she become Athena.

Then there was New Melbourne, and she was just Sharon Agathon, wife of Karl Agathon, mother of Hera Agathon, and Sharon Agathon had to get to work.

Sharon appeared in the kitchen about ten minutes later, carrying the tray and dirtied dishes over towards the sink. Hera was sitting at the table, perched up on a stack of books so that she could reach, hungrily shoveling cereal into her mouth.

“Almost ready, honey?” she asked. Hera nodded vigorously in response. Sharon crossed to where Karl was cleaning up the counters. “And you’ll pick her up on your way home from work?”

“Of course,” he replied, dampening a sponge.

As he cleaned, she glanced around the kitchen and caught a glimpse out the window. She could see the shoreline, but couldn’t quite see where the ocean ended and the sky began. You could never quite tell where the horizon was here, and it made her smile. 

Turning her attention back to the kitchen, she took a visual sweep of her life, and Karl’s wallet on the counter caught her eye. She reached for it, and she stared at the forged ID. “I still can’t believe you have Helo listed as your middle name.” She laughed. 

\---

It rained all through the day.  The preschool teachers were used to it, though the kids always seemed restless when they couldn’t go outside. Hera Agathon never seemed to mind. She was quite content to spend her time drawing during play hours. The teachers thought of her as a quiet child, perhaps not the most social butterfly. They wanted to blame the parents for not socializing her enough when she was an infant.

Ms. Asato was the teacher’s assistant in Hera’s class. It was her job, mostly, to go around and make sure that all the kids were playing nice, taking turns, not beating each other up.  She was young, just out of university, and it was not her ideal job. However, she often felt that seeing what young Miss Agathon was working on was the highlight of her day.

She watched the girl scribbling furiously on the piece of paper before her and decided to investigate. “Hey, Hera,” she said softly, kneeling beside the girl. “What’re you drawing there?” She studied the picture for a moment before a jolt of joy jumped through her. “Would you look at that? It’s the Alliance flag! You’re so patriotic, Hera.” Ms. Asato smiled at the picture for a moment before she pointed to what appeared to be a scribble next to the flag. “What is that pointy thing there? It looks like a star.”

\---

“Saul?” she called out softly as she entered the apartment. The front rooms were dark, except for the soft blue glow of the holoscreen. She shrugged off her mandarin collared jacket and hung it on a hook beside the door; setting her purse on a side table, she stepped into the living room. “Saul?”

She paused for a moment listening to the hushed apartment before she was certain she heard a soft humming. As she traced the source of the sound, the heels of her pumps clicked rhythmically against the floor, marking each step.

There was a quiet shushing from the second bedroom, just as she appeared in the doorway. “I just got him to sleep,” Tigh said from where stood beside the crib. Smiling softly, she slipped out of the shoes and crossed the room to stand beside him. “It took him forever to stop crying.”

“You’re a good father,” Caprica whispered as she leaned over the rail to look at her baby boy.

“Damn right, I am,” Tigh whispered, watching her.

She reached out her hand, gently stroking the few wisps of hair that grew on his head. He’d only been a part of the world for a few months, but already he was the light of her life. She loved everything about the baby- tiny nose, tiny fingers, tiny little breaths as he slept soundly.

Memories are a powerful force. So much so, that as that particular one flooded her she stumbled backwards away from the crib, clutching her right hand against her chest, which heaved with sharp, stunned breaths. Her head felt thick with fog as the entire scene replayed, the focused sight on her victim, the feel of soft flesh against her fingers; and a wave of nausea surged within her.

“What’s wrong?” Saul asked.

She shook her head, both to reassure him that she was fine and to shake away the sounds of the snapping neck that she would remember forever. With that, she turned sharply, left the nursery, and moved to collapse on the couch. After tucking baby Liam in, and double-checking to make sure he was completely covered by the blanket, Tigh joined her in the living room.

His first stop, of course, was the liquor cabinet. “How was work?” he asked over his shoulder as he pulled out a bottle of shimmerwine.

She curled her knees up beside her on the couch. “It was just fine,” she replied, her voice still quivering from the force of something painful that she just wouldn’t tell him. He made some kind of non-committal guttural noise in reply. 

After all, their life together was more out of necessity than anything else; however, it didn’t mean they weren’t fond of each other. In the past few months, it became increasingly clear that there was some kind of bond between them, other than their miracle child. They had no name for this bond, they were not lovers, nor were they friends.

“I don’t like it.” When he didn’t know what to say to her, he would complain. She didn’t find it annoying, in fact on some level she found it something along the lines of endearing. Anyway, he had gotten her to smile. He took his glass of shimmerwine and sat down on the couch beside her.

“I’m not going to quit working,” she insisted.

“I didn’t say you should quit working; just find another job,” he said as he took a sip from the glass. “The Alliance is crawling all over any kind of scientific institution, don’t you think it’s a risk putting yourself out there so much?”

“I’m merely a research assistant.” Caprica grimaced; she was better than that, but it was a measure to prevent drawing too much attention to herself. Being close to power was an advantage, though she didn’t feel like lecturing Saul on the subject. It had served her well in past purposes, and she continued to hope it would serve her well now; it’s harder for the lion to catch the zebra when the zebra knows the lion’s coming. “They know nothing about our kind,” she said firmly.

“Gods help us when they finally find out,” he said, lifting himself from the couch. “I’m going to get ready for bed.” He continued to drain his glass as he disappeared into the bedroom.

Letting out an exhausted sigh, she let her hair down and made her way to the kitchen. She snatched a glass from the cabinet and turned on the faucet, filling it half way with water. Perhaps the morning would be better, she thought as she made her way to turn off the holoscreen in the living room.

For a moment, she thought she was so tired that she had made her way to the mirror. It was only a split second later that she realized that it was not her reflection, but rather an image, her image being bounced out to the entire 'verse over the Alliance’s signals.

Her feet were wet.

She’d lost her grip on the glass and it had shattered at her feet.

\---

Human senses may be limited, but they still functioned and he could smell the blood through the metal walls of the Alliance Cruiser.

They had jumped and ended up on top of what looked to be a flying city. It had been enough even to impress Cavil, the sheer size of the ship made by such tiny and insignificant beings as humans. Moments later, a command had come over the communications line: dock and prepare to be boarded.

They had been prepared alright, with an army of Centurions waiting for the Alliance soldiers as they boarded the ship.

For the first time in many years, Cavil began to wonder if there was something to this God thing that so many of the other Cylons were all worked up about. He believed in the power he had and knew he was going to crush these pathetic soldiers.

Pride was his sin, and sitting in the dank cell, he certainly felt he was being punished for crossing something larger than him. On the other hand, it was probably the totalitarian government with enough technology to take out the Centurions with a virus.

Either way, there he sat, hands chained beneath an interrogation table.

Waiting. 

He wasn’t quite sure how long he had been there before a man- one Commander Harken-  appeared at the entry to the interrogation room. It seemed rather like Harken was following a script. Who are you? What kind of ship is that? Where is your registration? On and on interminably. Things didn’t get interesting until a man in a lab coat appeared at the doorway. Harken was only gone a minute before he returned, looking paler than he had before.

The examination from of the ship had become an autopsy.

“What kind of gorram freaks are you?” he hissed through clenched teeth.

Here came the pride again.

Machines. Humanoid machines. Smarter, stronger, faster than they could ever hope to be, clearly the superior race. He definitely had Harken’s attention now.

“I know who they are.” Cavil said, reclining in his seat. “And I know you want them.”

“Now, all I need to know is what you want in exchange for this information.”

He was practically salivating, Cavil thought. Surely, the man thought a discovery like this could make his entire career.  “Two things,” he said. “First of which you can probably guess is freedom, for myself and the others from my ship.”

“And the second?”

“There’s a little girl,” he said. “The only one of her kind; half cylon, half human. I want her.”

It was a deal. Harken allowed himself out of the room, closing the door behind him, leaving Cavil to bask in his pride once again.

“Can you pull the information on the Cylons from the ship’s computer?” Harken asked to the nameless labcoat.

“Yes, sir.”

He smirked. “Lock them up where no one will find them again.”

 

\--End Chapter--


	6. Chapter 6

This was not waking-up-hung-over pain. This was another realm entirely.

She could taste the copper of her own blood over each tastebud and felt the hot stickiness of it seeping down into her lungs. Kara rolled onto her side, falling into a coughing fit; fresh red joining dried, brown stains on the carpet beside her.

How long had she been out?

Scratch that.

What had knocked her out?

She struggled to her knees, bracing against the floor as the bedroom spun around her in taunting circles. “Frak me,” she hissed to herself.

She tried to piece it together, the tattered bits of memory. Dinner; dinner had happened. She made dinner for Sam and he jokingly teased her about her cooking. They were headed for the bed when there was a loud-

“No. No no no no no.” A mantra of disbelief. Her feet did not want to support her weight right now, but she was damned well going to make them. She stumbled against the doorframe, staring out into the main room of the apartment, only to see the front door lying splintered only feet away.

“Sam!” No response; her heart clenched inside her chest.

Grey uniforms.

“SAM!” Louder still, she ventured a few fumbling steps into the room. No response.

She remembered just a blur of grey uniforms.

“SAMMY!” All of her energy in her voice, her knees gave way and she once again found herself making friends with the floor, among debris and blood stains.

They took him.

They took him and all she could do was scream. Pathetic. For a moment, just one fleeting moment, she thought about Admiral Adama… about Lee Adama… about _Galactica_ and snorted a bitter laugh at how far she’d fallen in such a short period of time.

That was when she heard it. A beep. The sound of an incoming wave.

Speak of the devil. Kara Thrace dragged herself over the screen to check, she just had to make sure; and she was right. The signal was coming off the Cortex, but it was coming off an encrypted line… their encrypted line. She accepted the message.

_Come in. Anyone. Please. Is anyone there? ANYONE?!_

“Helo?” She hadn’t seen his face in so long; so far away but there it was, on the screen staring back at her. “What’s wrong?”  
_  
Starbuck? Thank the gods. It’s Athena and Hera. I came home from work and the house was just… torn apart. There were bullet holes in the walls and they’re-_

“-gone,” she finished for him, her voice filled with a kind of hollow recognition.  
_  
How did-?_

“Last night. They got Longshot. I just came to.”

_Gods, Starbuck._ A third party tapped into the encrypted line. Felix Gaeta’s image appeared alongside Helo’s. _You look like hell._

“You would too if Alliance broke into your apartment.”

_Alliance? _Helo asked.

“Who else would it be?” she barked; it dawned on her that she should give the former tactical officer the sitrep. “Sam, Sharon, and Hera are missing.”

A moment of letting the mind wheels spin. _Are they going after the Cylons? _Gaeta asked.

“We don’t know that,” she snapped. “Two points make a line, not a pattern.” Kara furiously rubbed her temple with her thumb. “Where the frak is everybody? The signal goes out, everyone’s supposed to get on the line.”  
_  
President Roslin and the Adamas are on Ariel. That means heavily guarded, tight security- a broad range signal like this might not be getting through_. Gaeta replied.

“It still doesn’t excuse the others.” Letting out a puff of air, she couldn’t vent herself of the anxiety that bubbled within her. “Okay okay. I’m going to bounce a private wave to Lee. See if he picks up. Hang on.” With a few keystrokes she had put the hidden call on hold and had typed in Lee’s contact information- information she wasn’t supposed to know. It took less than seconds to him to pick up.

_Kara._ It wasn’t a question, or much of anything really. As Lee’s face came up on screen, she could see that… look in his eyes; that look, she’d seen it before. Thousands upon thousands of miles apart, their eyes met for the first time in a year.

She could feel her lips tugging into a smile and she could feel the tightness in her chest as her fingers reached out to touch the image on the screen. There were so many things she wanted to say. She wanted to ask him if life on Ariel was all it was cracked up to be; she wanted to tell him how much she missed him; she wanted to scream at him for not trying to get in touch with her- despite the fact she hadn’t exactly tried, either- but, as usual, this was not the time for that. “Lee. Can you get in contact with Tigh?”

_I can’t._ He paused. _My father might be able to. Why?_

“Get him to get in touch with Tigh. Now.”  
_  
What’s-_

“That’s an order.”

There was just the hint of a smile, not on his face but in his voice. _Yes, sir.  
_  
The clock only showed that ten minutes had passed, but it felt more like hours as she paced the trashed room in tight circles.  
_  
Dad says Tigh’s been the only person he’s risked contact with since we left _Galactica_… and hasn’t heard from him in weeks. What’s going on, Kara?  
_  
“Three points,” she hissed, biting her thumb. “Helo reported that Athena and Hera were gone. Last night, Alliance soldiers broke into my apartment and when I woke up, Sam was gone too... FRAK!” Her fist hit the wall; slivers of the door which still clung to the frame, now clattered to the ground with their fallen comrades. “They’re going after the Cylons.”

\---

Anyone who wanted to volunteer for the mission was to rendezvous on Beaumonde. It was a logical place, she’d explained to Lee and later to the few who had gotten on the Colonial line; plenty of civilian shuttles coming in, without the intense guard of planets like Ariel, also a single rendezvous point would save time picking everyone up; the clock had started and the longer they waited, the longer it would be. Without FTL, the wait was going to be hours.

Kara had been sitting in the Maidenhead, drumming her fingers for three of those long hours. Her fingers tapped out an anxious drumbeat on the table as she nursed a drink; constantly casting her gaze to the stairs; and then as soon as she felt the pang of disappointment, her attention was yanked back to the piece of paper in her hands.

Hastily scribbled down was a message that came directly to her, over the encrypted line but to her alone. There was no voice, no video, no confirmation of the identity of the sender, just the words:

_They’ve only begun.  
Centurions are out of commission._

_In the lab:  
Countless Ones, Fours, and Fives  
One Leoben  
D’Anna  
Four Sixes, Caprica and Sonja included  
Five Eights, Boomer included  
Saul and Ellen Tigh  
Tory Foster_

_Samuel Anders, Athena, and Hera are in captivity. More Cylons en route to lab._

_Coordinates to follow. _

Unable to sit still, she cast her eyes up towards the large screen that filled up a wall in the bar. A Fruity Oaty Bar commercial was winding to a close. Kara hated that ad, it was just so tacky and quite frankly a little bit disturbing- and the product wasn’t great either. Directly following the commercial, the PSA came on again. It had played at least once every half hour as long as she’d been there. She practically had it memorized.

“Have you seen these people?” The screen asked. The first image to appear was Sharon… Boomer… Athena… Eight… the bitch who shot Adama… Helo’s wife, Hera’s mother… whoever she was, followed directly by the image of Tory, then Chief.

Kara wasn’t too worried about him. He was safe aboard _Serenity_; there was no way that they’d ever find him in a pack of outlaws… unless Jayne got the brilliant idea to hand him in for a reward; she wouldn’t put it past him.

Next they showed two different Sixes, one blonde and one platinum. Kara has seen a Six around Beaumonde, maybe once or twice in the entire year. She didn’t know exactly how the ally Cylons had hidden themselves, but she’d heard a rumor about a rule that no more than two of any given model were to settle on a planet.

The next picture on the screen was Tigh and directly following him would be the cold image of the man who’d kept her prisoner for four months. She hated watching because for a few moments the eyes in the picture would hold her hostage once again, before she had to look away. The last one was Sam, her Sam. Instead, she stared into her drink before polishing off what was left in the glass.

Just shy of seven hours after she’d given the order, Helo was the first to appear at the crowded bar. Despite the crush of people, he found Starbuck at the corner table in the back with relative ease. “That any good?” He asked as he slid into a seat across from her, motioning to the glass in front of her, half-emptied of it’s brown liquid.

Without so much as a beat, she pushed the glass across the table. “Knock yourself out. I need to work on sobering up.” She cradled her head in her hands as he picked up the glass, swirling the liquid inside for a moment before setting it back down.

“I take it you’ve had a lot of these,” he replied; a smile rested on his lips but his eyes were dull, distant.

Kara forced herself to sit upright. “Not enough. You, on the other hand, should be three sheets to the wind considering the circumstances.”

Helo shook his head and slid the drink back towards his former fellow pilot. “I’m trying to keep a clear head right now.”

Before he could even take his hand off the glass, she pushed it back towards him. “You can have a clear head when we fight, there’s a lot of time between now and then… still waiting on the rest of our ‘crew.’” She gave a nod and a wink. “Drink up.”

He let out a deep sigh before he picked up the glass. “In that case…” he tipped it towards her in toast. “Cheers.” Throwing his head back, he drained the remainder of the glass and slammed it down onto the table. He sat a moment, engaged in what seemed to be some intensely deep thoughts. “I think I’m gonna need another one.”

Kara allowed herself a short laugh, some actual enjoyment of the moment before she turned her attention once more to the crumpled note in her hand.

“What’s that?” Helo asked, leaning forward to get a better look.

Her eyes stayed fixed on Anders’ name. “A list of captive Cylons.”

“How? What?” Helo snatched the paper from her hand. “How?”

Hands now freed, she furiously rubbed at her temples. “I don’t know who sent it. But it came over the colonial encryption, so it has to be one of us. Right now, I’m not asking a lot of questions, just being grateful that we have it.”

“Here’s one question,” Helo said as he handed the paper back to her. “We have a lot of allies on that list, but what about the others?”

“Frak if I know,” she hissed. “We’ll figure out what to do about them later.”

“Well, if you ask me you should probably figure out what to do about the enemy Cylons before we storm the Alliance or whatever you’ve got planned; a battlefield is not generally the best place for discussion.”

Kara looked up to see Anastasia Dualla standing beside the table; and in tow, only a few steps behind her, Felix Gaeta stumbled out of the crowd on his crutches with Louis Hoshi right beside him. The smile was coming back to Kara, little glimmers of hope as the number of people on the mission more than doubled before her eyes. “It’s good to see you Gaeta, Hoshi, Dee.” The two sitting pilots both scooted a bit so the former CIC staff could join them at the table.

“Quite the crew we have here,” Gaeta said, taking up a seat beside Helo.

Kara nodded, “Well, we’re waiting on a few more, and then we’re out.” She cast her gaze towards Dee beside her. “I can’t thank you enough.”

“For what?” Dee asked, looking back at her.

“I heard you’re the one who created the encrypted channel.”

“Oh that,” she replied with a humble smile. “Well, I heard the Old Man talking to Colonel Tigh about a week before we left, saying he wanted some way to be able to keep in touch in case of an emergency. Inara showed me how the telephonix system worked, and I just found a way to hide that particular frequency.”

“Well, you saved our frakking asses,” Kara replied.

Dee smirked. “If you’re so grateful, you can pay me back with a drink. I need one.”

Rounds of drinks rolled by, while Kara grudgingly stuck to water. The pilots grilled the trio from Boros about their lives, while the others kept cautiously tiptoed away from the subject of Kara and Karl’s lives. They’d been assigned to settle on Boros by random lottery and had pooled their resources to get a place together. Gaeta thought it was hilarious when Dee got a job as a secretary; her feelings on the matter were quite clear when she reached across the table and gave him a good smack. “I think they’ll probably fire me for just taking off like this, but I don’t care that much. Nothing in the ‘verse would make me miss this.”

“So, what’s up your sleeve, Starbuck?” Gaeta asked. “I mean, you asked us all to meet here but you wouldn’t say anything else.”

“I have a plan.” Kara paused. “Okay, it’s something resembling a plan, but I want to wait for everyone before I spill the details. I don’t feel like repeating myself.”

“Well then, Starbuck, let’s have the sitrep.” There it was. That voice with the gravel of sandpaper, but the tone that always managed to soothe her. Eleven hours after she’d given the order, William Adama had arrived at the rendezvous point; on either side of him stood Laura Roslin and Lee Adama.

“Yes, sir,” she replied with a salute, rising to her feet.

Adama simply shook his head. He took a step towards her, putting his arms around her and pulling her into a tight hug. It lasted only a moment, it couldn’t last much longer than that, and he stepped back keeping his hands on her shoulders in the trademark Adama style. “This is not the Colonial Fleet anymore, Kara. If anyone is in charge of this mission, it’s you.”

She tilted her head left then right, feeling a slight crack from the tension in her bones. She drew in a deep breath and rolled her shoulders back as she surveyed them all. It had been a full year without so much as a word between them, and yet here they all were, as ready for action as ever. “Alright then. Everyone, follow me.”

\---

This time the previous year, she had been a passenger ship designed for mass transit for cross-‘verse travel. Nothing fancy, more like a glorified bus than anything else. Overused and outdated, the transport company that owned her was practically begging for someone to take it off their hands. It was the passenger’s quarters that had drawn Kara to the old girl in the first place- real sleeping quarters on the upper level; she wasn’t sure why it drew her in, maybe on some level she was always hoping she’d need it for something like this.

The ship had a kitchen, too, just beyond the landing bay, which had once held a shuttle for dropping passengers off on worlds they’d pass as they crossed the ‘verse. There was no real mess hall area like Serenity’s but it had all the essentials, having once been used to prepare mass meals; it would be much easier to cook there than the tiny excuse for a kitchen in the apartment. She liked to deny it, but buried deep down, Kara Thrace had a little streak of domesticity.

“Sorry about the clutter,” Kara said as she led her crew into a rather large room littered with scraps of seating above the cargo bay and kitchen, between the bridge and engine room. Wide windows provided a view out over the wings of the ship; it would be a phenomenal sight in the depths of space. The seating had been for the mass quantity of travelers, but Kara was in the process of ripping them out, planning to turn the room into… well she wasn’t quite sure yet. For months, she had been trying to get Sam to come around to the idea of taking off together and making the ship their home. The lack of hominess lay as clear evidence of Sam’s reaction to the idea.

“This is… impressive.” Laura was the first to venture to speak.

She was trying. Kara smiled and laughed. “She’s a piece of crap, but she’s my piece of crap.” She thumped the side of her fist against the wall. “She’s solid, she’ll fly. Best of all, Chief and Kaylee were on planet ‘bout a month ago, and thanks to them we’ve got FTL.” She caught the looks of joy that were starting to appear around her, and she wasn’t ready to hear any kind of victory celebration. “BUT! There is a ‘but’ here. We’re unarmed. No weapons of any kind, so we’re pretty much flying defenseless.”

Kara continued to watch their faces. It was whiplash. She’d pulled them all out of their lives into some insane mission they might not survive. As she studied them, another thought crossed her mind. Maybe she had woken them up from the surreal dream that had been the past year.

“Captain,” Adama said, as he stepped towards her. “What’s the plan?”

Kara realized it was probably a little bit of both. “We get this bird off-world. Once we get a decent number of clicks away from any kind of sensors on this planet, we spin up the FTL and make a jump out to where we left _Galactica_.” She turned to face Gaeta. “Can you plot that jump?”

He broke out into a wide grin. “It’s what I do.”

She turned back to the group as a whole. “We get there, we suit up, and we raid the arms lockers. Guns, grenades- anything we can carry out, we move to this ship. Once we load up, we…” She took deep breath. Coordinates to follow. “We’re going to be receiving coordinates over the colonial line, location of the lab where they’re keeping the Cylons. We’ve got someone on the inside and I’m banking on that to get us in. Then, we storm the place, get our people, and get the frak out of there.” She punctuated the lecture with a sharp nod, which elicited a round of cheers from the others.

“Lee, join me on the bridge; you’re first mate. Got it?” Kara said.

“Yes, sir.” He grinned.

“Everyone else, feel free to duke it out over the living quarters upstairs. We’re getting off this rock.”

 

\--End Chapter--


	7. Chapter 7

Kara sat with her feet propped up on the unoccupied co-pilot chair. The hatch to the main room hung open. Lee, Dee, and Roslin had made short work of getting comfortable, even in the sparse space. With her in the bridge, Gaeta and Hoshi sat by a console off the to the side of the cockpit, furiously working out the details of the jump together. Adama and Helo were nowhere to be seen, but Kara assumed they were above still looking at the staterooms. As she listened to the voices floating in from the other room, a thought dawned on her. This felt more like home than her apartment on Beaumonde ever did.

\---

In the next room, Lee paced the floor, reading over the scribbled note for the thirtieth time. He glanced over at Dee and Laura who had made themselves comfortable; having dragged a mattress down from one of the staterooms that no one claimed and laid it out on the floor. “What does it mean that the Centurions are out of commission?”

“Probably exactly what it sounds like,” Dee commented, leaning back against the wall. “Shut down. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Alliance found a way to override the programming and just turn them all off.”

Laura rose to join Lee in his pacing. “Without the Centurions, especially in light of the fact that their resurrection capabilities have been taken away, they are technically defenseless.”

Dee’s eyebrows furrowed. “You can’t be suggesting what I think you’re suggesting.”

“We can’t just leave them there,” Laura replied as she sat back down on the mattress beside her.

“Even if they were or are our enemies, the fact of the matter is that even if they escape, they will be too busy looking over their shoulders to see if the Alliance is coming for them to cause any real damage.” Lee ran a hand through his hair, letting out a breath he had been holding in too long.

“So, what?” Dee rolled over onto her stomach; her tone of voice was not antagonistic, just genuinely curious. “We bring them on the ship with us?”

Lee scratched his head for a moment before motioning for her to scoot, so he could join them. “I don’t know. Maybe there’s an Alliance ship that they could hijack. We have our mysterious benefactor working for them, maybe we can get a leg up that way.”

Laura’s mind had apparently left the Cylon conversation, but it seemed his recent statement had synced up perfectly with where her thoughts had wandered. “I can’t help wondering who it is.”

Lee cast a confused look in her direction.

“Our man on the inside,” she clarified. “I don’t know if it was foresight on their part or just sheer luck on ours. I feel like I shouldn’t be looking a gift horse in the mouth this way.”

\---

Through the conversation, Kara heard the soft thunk of feet on metal as someone descended the stairs from the passenger’s quarters. She turned in time to see Adama appear by the hatch. She took a moment to take him in. “You know, I didn’t mention it earlier, but the button-down and vest combo looks really… really… you,” she said with as much sarcasm as she could muster while choking back a laugh.

She swung her legs off the chair, allowing Adama to take a seat. “I thought that my uniform might attract some unwanted attention.” He leaned forward resting his elbows on his knees. “How are you holding up?”

“Trying to distract myself from thoughts about my husband being experimented on with thoughts of how I’m probably leading my loved ones into a death trap.” She could hear the sharp edge in her own voice, cutting herself just a little bit more. “I just yanked everyone out of their lives and into this mess.”

“We all have a stake in this,” his voice comforted her just as much as the gentle hand on her knee. “As far as messes go, I think we’ve faced worse.”

He was right; but rather than acknowledging it, Kara turned her gaze out into the vast blackness, speckled with the twinkling of stars; billions upon billions of them, burning away at the farthest reaches of the ‘verse. “We’re eight people trying to sneak into a heavily guarded government facility; seven if you take into account the fact that Felix here is staying on the ship.” She jerked her finger towards where he was working; he wore a bit of a grimace at the notion.

“Eight again if you count our benefactor, and that’s only on the way in. We will have at least a half dozen more allies on the way out.” Adama rose from his seat. “Kara, you are in charge of this mission; and if anything is going to get us all killed, it’s this kind of thinking. We all came here by choice.”

Gaeta looked up from his work and turned his chair to face them. “I know that some of us don’t have the same kind of stake in this that you do; none of our loved ones were taken. But we have been in hiding for the past year; these aren’t lives we chose to live. Back on the Colonies we chose to enlist in the military… this is what we do,” he said, pounding his fist against the wall for emphasis. With a slight wince, he shook it out and went back about his work.

Adama placed a firm hand on her shoulder. “Everyone aboard _Galactica_ was a family, and you never leave family behind.”

She wasn’t quite sure what happened in the seconds in between but the next thing she knew, she had her arms around his shoulders in a deep hug, and she was sighing out every last drop of anxiety from her body. With a smirk on her lips, she decided to ruin the moment. “You almost left me on that moon,” she said as she stepped backwards away from him.

“You’re here, aren’t you?” He smiled. “Quit complaining.” She watched him turn to join the ongoing debate in the other room, before he abruptly spun on his heel to face her. “By the way, you never told us her name.”

Kara tucked a lock of hair behind her ear as she glanced around the bridge. “Her name is _Kobol_.”

“Good name,” he said before exiting the room, closing the hatch door behind him.

Kara took up her seat once again, staring back into the black. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed before she heard a triumphant whoop coming from the tactical officers. “There’s a lot of rocks and satellites between here and there, but we’ve got our jump.”

\---

Dark was never really a word Kara would have associated with _Galactica_. Empty was another one. She was full, alive, busy, bright- even when she was about to be decommissioned. Now, standing in the hangar deck, illuminated only by 4 flashlights, the old girl felt dead.

Four space suits were all she had on board. Back when Kara’d been prepping the ship for a possible life aboard it, she hadn’t considered the possibility of needing to stage a weapons heist from _Galactica_; surely if the thought had crossed her mind she would have staged ahead. With the ship powered down and no light nor oxygen, they might as well be out there on the bare moon. The other thing they shouldn’t have had was the artificial gravity, but she felt it weighing on them, heavier than it ought to be by the moon’s gravity alone. “Hang on a sec,” she said, fishing out her oh-two indicator and saw the green stripe that meant they, in point of fact, did have oxygen.

“That is too weird,” she muttered as she snapped off her helmet and took a deep breath. “I thought we powered down everything before we left.” Her words were lost on the others who were too caught up in their own observations.

“This is so creepy,” Dee commented, her light sweeping arcs around the deck illuminating sending small circles of light flashing over glimpses of the past. She noted Lee' s flashlight, which followed Helo as he broke off from the group, making his way to one of the old raptors, which hadn’t seen the sky in months and probably never would again. With great care he singled out one Raptor in particular and traced his fingers purposefully over the contours.

Reverie didn’t last long. Nostalgia didn’t have a place in today’s mission. The game was arm up and get out and their target was the small arms locker right off the hangar deck. It was in the middle of the third trip between Kobol and the locker that Kara saw Dee’s flashlight, frantically scanning the deck.

“What’s wrong?” Lee asked, directing his course towards her, away from the weapons storage.

“I thought… I thought I heard something,” she said shaking her head, before rejoining the others in the stockpiling of weapons. “It’s a shame the gravity is on, it’d be a lot easier to carry all this stuff if it wasn’t.”

“We have an incoming wave here,” Hoshi’s voice came over the comm from the ship, his voice was ringing with excitement. “We’ve got our coordinates.”

“Thank the gods,” Kara said. “Alright guys, one more trip and then let’s get the frak out of here.”

As Helo walked out into the hangar bay for the last trip, he noticed one circle of light focused out into the depths of the hangar. “What’s going on?”

“This time I know I heard something,” Dee replied, voice full of firm conviction. As Helo turned his flashlight to illuminate her, well Kara wasn’t sure what had happened, but she heard Dee’s scream loud and clear.

“What the frak is going on?” Kara shouted, sprinting as best she could in the heavy suit towards them. She couldn’t make it out in the darkness but she heard a slew of cursing and several gunshots before her flashlight finally caught… They were faces, vaguely human, but mutilated beyond belief. Flesh stripped away, teeth filed to points, and she was fairly certain she counted extraneous body parts hanging off their clothing. The one closest to her was holding a strangely shaped knife, dripping red. “What are these things?”

“I don’t know,” she heard Lee over the comm, “But they’re trying to get aboard. Where the frak did these things come from?!”

Kara’s head spun. “Shit. Okay, seal off the airlock, don’t let them get aboard, we’ll figure it out, from here!” she shouted, firing off a few bullets as another one of those things raced towards her. The bullet went straight through it’s skull and it dropped dead just at her feet.

“Kara, we need to get back on the ship,” Helo barked. Kara turned to see him, kneeling on the floor, holding Dee who seemed to be out cold. “She’s losing blood.”

“Any grenades left in the arms locker?” Kara asked, mind racing as she took aim to ward off the other encroaching creatures.

The split second it took Helo to think felt like a lifetime. “No, I think they’re all on board, already.”

“Frak that,” she growled. “And frak this, they’re coming this way.” She fired off another bullet but the chamber clicked as empty. “Okay Lords,” she muttered, “Need a little help down here, anything you can do to help us out?”

For a moment she thought it was some divine white light, the second after that she realized it was a blast from a rather large gun taking out the cadre of creatures that were charging from _Kobol _towards them. She shone her light in the direction of the blast to see Jayne triumphantly carrying Vera out in front of him, hollering like a loud ape, as he fired shots into the darkness past the three colonials.

“Well, I suppose that’s one definition of help,” she muttered to herself. The path to the ship now cleared, she helped Helo hoist Dee up and carried her towards the ship. As they neared the landing bay, Kara could clearly see _Serenity_ docked along side _Kobol_; she could also see Dr. Tam, by their airlock, motioning to bring the wounded girl to him. Helo took Dee’s weight onto his shoulders and carried her towards their allies.

Home clear was not really the situation. Thundering footsteps approaching roared through the hangar deck, feral growls rushed like wind in her ears. “Get down!” Lee’s voice was all Kara heard from the open hatch before she dropped to the floor. There was the clang of metal behind her, followed shortly by the scorching blast of the grenade and deafening screams of its victims.

\---

“Reavers,” Mal explained over the telephonix system once they were a few clicks out from _Galactica_. “Men that were just like us; went out to the furthest reaches of space, saw a big nothing and went feng le.” He tapped his forefinger against the side of his head to emphasize the point. “Must’ve found the abandoned ship and figg’red it would be a good place to set up camp.” The prospect shattered Adama’s heart, and Mal could see it all over his face, even through the video screen. The ship was no longer theirs; that life was no longer theirs; Mal remembered the same pain from long ago.

Kara was the one to press the conversation forward. “How’d you know we’d be out there?”

“Galen picked up your signals, about 14 hours ago. Reckoned y’all’d be comin’ out here for supplies and he and Kaylee threatened to mess up the engines somethin’ fierce if we didn’t jump on out here,” Mal deadpanned, but he couldn’t keep a straight face for long, not with the look Kara was giving him. “And a chance to take the Alliance down a notch doesn’t sound like a bad day, neither. Besides, we never leave a man behind, as far as I’m concerned y’all are honorary crew members.”

“Speaking of,” Kara said, her tone now more serious. “How is Dee holding up?”

“Doc said some kind of medical mumbo jumbo that I mostly tuned out on, but I reckon the gist of it was she’s probably more frightened than injured. He gave her a weave and she’ll be up and about shortly, not exactly in condition to go raiding an Alliance cruiser though.”

“Well, since it looks like we may be down another person, got any spare hands you’d care to share on this mission?”

“I think we’ve got a boatful,” he replied with a grin.

 

\--End Chapter--


	8. Chapter 8

It was right after they’d jumped into the range of the massive ship- it looked more like a floating city than any space ship Kara’d ever seen- that another anonymous message came over the colonial encrypted line. Exactly 300 seconds from the time the message was sent, an alarm would go off- high-level, high-security, requiring all personnel to respond immediately. It would leave the Deck 13 port side hangar completely unattended, and would give both _Serenity_ and _Kobol_ a place to dock. The benefactor signed with a post-script saying he would be there to lead them to the lab and assist in their escape by any means necessary.

True to the message, 300 seconds later as they came in for the landing, the deck was completely empty except for a few unattended Alliance Short Range Enforcement Vessels. As the crews disembarked, they could hear a faint blaring siren in the distance. She still was not entirely sure whether this was actually an event in their favor or a rather spectacular set-up. Kara took a quick headcount- Adama, Roslin, Lee, Helo, Mal, Zoë, Jayne, Kaylee, Chief, Hoshi, and herself; not the best odds, but she wouldn’t want to be crossing this group any time soon either. “Remember,” she said, “This is a rescue mission. We’re here to get in and get out, shoot only if you have to.”

Kara turned, glancing about the empty hangar. “Alright,” she called out, hearing nothing but her own footsteps as they echoed. The others held their breath in anticipation. “I know you’re here somewhere.”

It wasn’t long before she heard _that_ voice. That voice. “Kara Thrace?” it asked from behind one of the ASREVs, and she shook her head. She would recognize that accent anywhere.

“That’s not…” Laura started. “It can’t be.”

“Who? What’s goin’ on here?” Kaylee asked, her eyes studying the bewildered expressions of the Colonials.

With three stomping footsteps, Kara stormed up to the vehicle behind which their ally hid, and pulled him out into plain sight by the labcoat he wore.

“_Gaius Baltar_?!” Were Lee able to detach his jaw it would have fallen for the floor.

“Who’s this scrawny piece of-” Jayne started, only to be cut off by Captain Thrace, who was all too pleased to tell everyone the tale.

“Gaius Baltar, won the presidency from Roslin and served out the most disasterous term you could imagine. More than 8000 people died at the hands of the Cylons under his rule.”

“Same Cylons we’re puttin’ our asses on the line to rescue?” Jayne snapped.

“We also have reason to believe,” Roslin said as she stepped forward, “that he is responsible for the failure of the Colonial Defenses at the time of the nuclear holocaust.”

“What’re you doing here, Baltar?” Lee asked, folding his arms over his chest.

“Being a traitor,” he said point blank, yanking himself free of Starbuck’s grip. “To the Alliance,” he clarified as he straightened himself out. He seemed composed for a moment before he started to squirm, eyes daring furiously and legs shifting in the way she was so used to seeing him. “With a government,” his voice squeaked for a moment before he stopped to emphatically clear his throat. “With a government such as this, I thought it might come in useful to have someone close to the power. It took some forgery and falsified records but I was able to instate myself within one of the more prestigious laboratories- here. Turns out it was more useful than I thought it would be.”

“I’m just surprised you’re not kissing their asses, being a good lapdog.” Kara hissed.

It was Gaius’s turn to grab her by the shirtfront. “You think I don’t have a loved one in jeopardy as well?” he snapped. It was a momentary outburst, before he turned to Jayne. “You. You look like an imposing man, I’ll be in need of your assistance. There is a main security room for the laboratory where they are keeping the Cylons. I will need to break in and, with your help, render the workers unconscious; can you do that?”

 His question was answered by the cocking of a gun.

“That is another option; excellent. All the containment cells are locked. There’s a numeric keypad beside each door. My security clearance does not grant me access to that key code, but once inside the security room I can re-assign a simple code that you can use to open the doors.”

“What kind of code?” Kara asked.

 “Does 1 2 3 4 5 6 work for you? Easy enough to remember?” Gaius retorted with a slight roll of the eyes.

\---

“How many guards?” Mal asked in a hushed voice as Kara tentatively peeked around the corner. The hallways made a labyrinth, but Baltar had given them very precise directions as to where to go. They would split into two groups, and take very defined paths which would lead them to a four-way intersection, just beyond the laboratory. True to his word, they converged, half of the group on either end of the hall waiting for the signal to strike.

She held up three fingers, as she pulled herself back against the wall, flashing the number both to her group, and Zoë’s group in the corridor opposite them. “What is taking him so long?” she hissed through clenched teeth. The longer they kept their position, the longer the Alliance had to find them. Though no one else spoke the words aloud, she could tell everyone was sharing the same thought. Everyone, that was, except Mal. His face wore blank expression, which meant the wheels in his head were clearly turning.

“Sorry,” Kara said, giving him a nudge on the shoulder.  He glanced over at her with the words in his eyes. _What for?_ “You got a miniature battalion face to face with the people who destroyed your ideals, and I’m sure the last thing you want to be doing is rescuing a bunch of prisoners.”

“It’ll be a cold day in hell ‘fore I find making trouble for the Alliance on the list of things I don’ wanna be doin’.”

\---

It was a job Gaius could have probably done alone, but he felt so much better having the grunting brute at his back toting a rather impressive gun. “Alright,” he said, as they neared a corner. “The door to the security center is just around this turn, now when- hey, what are you doing?!”

Before he could stop him, Jayne had launched an explosive around the bend, landing squarely outside the door. Cobb grabbed Baltar by the labcoat and yanked him away from the blast radius. “I did have a keycard, you frakwit!” Gaius snapped.

“You needed you in and them knocked out. Two birds, one grenade,” he said with a smirk as the vibrations of the explosion shook the corridor. “Now let’s move!” he shouted above the first few blares of a new siren.

The pair ran out into the smoke filled corridor and around the brand new hole where the door used to be. Several technicians who had been near the door at the time of the blast, lay unconscious in their chairs, or in pools of blood on the floor. Two guards still stumbled about, coughing as the smoke filled their lungs.  Jayne charged ahead, cocking his gun to fire.

“No no no!” Gaius shouted as he trailed him into the room. “It is possible to do this without getting everyone killed.” The security staff seemed to have other ideas, as they charged, Jayne raised his gun and clocked them both on the head and smirked as they dropped like ragdolls.

The sound Gaius made was something of a whimper, as he pushed one of the technicians out of the chair and began to type furiously, working to reset the keypad codes remotely. He knew it would only be a matter of minutes before some more heavily armed men were upon them, and even Jayne standing guard was not quite enough any more.

“Sounds like company,” Jayne grumbled, from the doorway. “Hurry it up.”

“Just a bit more… there!” Gaius declared with triumph. “Alright, now if I can just remotely unlock the main door to the lab…”

“…There now,” came the voice. Gaius looked up to see a pair of long, lean legs crossed at the knee dangling in front of him. His gaze slithered up her form, up the curves hugged by the red dress, and finally landing on Six’s face as she gazed down at him from her perch on the console. “I told you taking this job would come in handy.”

\---

There was a loud beep as the main door to the lab unlocked remotely and the hiss of hydraulics as it slid open; followed shortly by murmurs of confusion. Kara glanced across the corridor to Zoë, giving a firm nod to make her move. She rounded the corner firing off three rounds, each one taking out a guard. Another silent signal from Kara and the rebels flooded into the corridor and stormed the entrance to the laboratory.

The stench of blood and decay hung in the air of the atrium mixed with the stinging smell of disinfectant chemicals. Kara fired two shots into the air, bringing the panicking labtechs to a quiet. Before she could take aim at any of them, she heard Lee call out. “These guys are all scientists, not soldiers. Do not aim to kill!”

The whitecoats didn’t move to attack. For the most part they moved to dive under tables and desks, especially as the rebels fanned out, most of them moving to the holding cells while Mal and Zoë moved to keep the scientists in line with a gun in each hand, each gun trained on a different area of the room. “Now folks, we’ll just be holdin’ you hostage here for a little while,” Mal said with a sweetly condescending tone. “So if ya’ll just stay where you are we’ll get what we want and be out of your hair in no time.”

\---

“Where…” Dee groaned as her eyes opened. “What?” She shook her head trying to force the fuzziness to subside as she sat up. “Where?” She could feel panic starting to rise in her chest, but it quickly faded away when she saw Doctor Tam enter the room- she’d seen him on _Galactica _once or twice in the past. “Why am I here?”

“It’s alright,” he said. “There was an attack when you were aboard _Galactica_; Mr. Agathon took you aboard here because I have better medical supplies than _Kobol._”

“I see,” she said, moving her hand over the treated wound on her shoulder. “Where are we now?”

Just as he started to go into the details, Wash’s voice came over the intercom. “Hey guys, arm up if you can. We’ve got some company.”

\---

Even before the containment cells, the rebels passed through a corridor lined with large glass windows that revealed tables, bizarre instruments, and bloodstains within. Most of them averted their gaze, trying their best to ignore what surely had happened in those rooms; especially because the foulest of the smells seemed to be coming through the doorways that led into them.

Try as she might to ignore the rooms, Laura could not help but stare into each one as she passed by. The majority of them were empty; but not the last one. Her hand shot to cover her mouth as she stifled a scream, stumbling back against the opposite wall. She could feel the blood drain from her face and her stomach clench. She could also feel Bill’s strong hands, trying to keep her upright. “Laura, what’s wrong?” he asked.

Before she could compose herself enough to speak, Kara had peered in to see what caused the reaction. “Oh gods!” she murmured, stepping back.

A body lay on the examining table in the center of the room, or at least what was left of the body. It had been a dissection from the look of it, exploring to see what parts were what. Laura found herself hoping that she’d been dead before they started. “That’s Tory…” she forced herself to speak. “That was Tory.”

Before another moment passed, Kara and Helo had taken off sprinting down the corridor.

\---

“Of course it would be you,” Kara muttered. Of course the first door she went to unlock would have him behind it. Kara could tell from the hideous shirt, before he even looked up, revealing his face and that little grin he always wore when he saw her and it made every single muscle in her body clench with just a little more tension. “You know this is actually kind of funny in a cosmic sort of way.” Her teeth ground together as she found herself fighting back a smile. “Tell me, how does it feel to be locked up for weeks on end?”

“Your accommodations were more comfortable,” he replied. “And you had better food.”

She laughed. She was actually laughing. She hated him, and she hated herself just a little bit because godsdammit he was making her laugh. “Just. Just go. Get out of here, we’re getting you all out.”

“Thank you, Kara,” Leoben said as he rose to his feet, moving to touch her cheek. Instinctively she drew back from him, but it didn’t change the expression on his face. “You are our savior.”

\---

There was a thud, the sound of a body as it threw itself against the door, futilely trying to gain freedom. Helo punched in the code on the door and it slid open just as they made another go at it, sending the pair toppling to the ground. As he gazed at the captive, he saw the spark of realization flash through her eyes only a moment before his wife captured his lips with a longing kiss.

Helo was pretty sure they wouldn’t have stopped if the need to get back on their feet and get moving wasn’t a priority. “Gods, I was afraid that I would never see you again.” He said as he ran his hand through her hair, bringing it to rest on her shoulder. He frowned, finally noticing that she was definitely standing with the majority of her weight on her left leg. “Are you alright?”

“I’ll be fine,” she said before nodding towards the gun he had holstered against his leg. “Got any more of those?”

Without another word, he withdrew another gun he’d been keeping tucked against the small of his back, and held it out to her. She reached out, keeping her hand holding his for a brief moment and they both reveled in the touch, before she drew her hand away, snatching the gun. Her eyes shone with just a hint of panic.

“Athena!” It was Caprica Six approaching the couple. Helo noticed that her eyes were just as frantic as his wife’s. “I know where they’re keeping the children,” she said, her voice anxious and rushed.

“Let’s go,” Sharon said, sliding the gun against the small of her back as she trailed her down the hall.

\---

 “Bill?” Saul Tigh’s voice seemed gravellier than he’d remembered. He stepped into the cell, offering his hand towards his old friend. As he finally pulled him to his feet, stumbling slightly -- Adama winced and announced the twinge he felt in his back--, they fell into a strong embrace shuddering somewhere between crying and laughter.

“We’re getting too old for this.” Adama said, his voice sure and steady, despite the tears that were forming in the corners of his eyes. “Are you okay?”

Tigh struggled to stop his sobbing laughter before he spoke. “Well, I didn’t lose an eye this time; so I can say I’ve been worse.”

Adama wasn’t quite ready to relinquish the embrace, but he could feel a change. He stepped back and saw Tigh’s eye transfixed on something behind him, something it seemed he could not wrap his mind around. Bill turned to find Ellen Tigh, favoring an injured arm standing in the doorway, staring back at Saul with the same kind of transfixed gaze. Smiling, he stepped aside as the two drew towards each other.

\---

The door slid open with a hiss after she punched in the code, and Kara felt her heart clench at the sight in front of her. Sam lay in a halo of blood on the floor, skin paler than she had ever seen it, but still she could see the slight rise and fall of his chest as he breathed.

Kara dropped to her knees beside him. “Sam!” she shouted, giving him a gentle shake. “Sam! Sammy!” she shouted, shaking him harder until his eyes fluttered open. 

He gave a soft laugh, a bit of blood trickling from his mouth as he did. “Doesn’t this usually work the other way?”

She leaned forward, giving him a quick kiss, cringing at the taste of the blood on her lips. She pulled his arm across her shoulders and hauled him up to his feet. “It’s okay, Sam. It’s over. We’re getting you out of here.” 

He swayed for a moment as she brought him to his feet before he insisted he could stand on his own.

“Like hell,” she replied.

A gentle smirk crossed his lips before he coughed. More blood.

“Sam!”

“No, Kara. I’m… alright.”

Grudgingly, she handed him one of the assault rifles she had been carrying and peered out into the corridor. “We’re clear. Come on.”

As he trailed her down the corridor she looked back at him, with something between a sorrowful smile and a smug smirk. “I told you that ship was a good idea.”

\---

“Shhhh,” Caprica soothed Liam, who bawled as he clutched at his mother. “It’s alright sweetie, Mommy’s here.” Hera on the other hand, was more composed, yet she kept her arms latched tightly around Athena’s neck, burying her face there; she seemed to be crying softly.

The soothing atmosphere didn’t last long, as the laboratory’s back door opened with a hiss and three soldiers came tearing into the nursery. Without a second’s hesitation, Sharon drew the gun from her backside and fired off a bullet into each soldier’s chest. “Frak!” She turned to Caprica. “Come on, we need to get out of here.”

 

\--End Chapter--


	9. Chapter 9

“Let’s get a move on!” Athena shouted as she and Caprica rejoined the others by the holding cells. “They’ve got another way in, I got three of them but I’m sure that’s not the last we’re gonna see.”

Helo motioned for Sharon and Caprica to move ahead of them, before Lee stepped forward, “Anyone who is injured or ill, move on ahead and meet up with Captain Reynolds and Zoë in the atrium. Anyone who is able grab a gun; we’re going to keep them covered from behind.”  
\---

Zoë looked up in time to see the two mothers round the corner; several others staggered in behind them. Laura Roslin, still not quite recovered from her earlier discovery, was assisting a dark skinned man who looked as though he was about to drop, and seeing the identical copies of that man following directly behind them, it finally dawned on Zoë just how strange this whole Cylon thing was. It didn’t really matter now; all that mattered was getting everyone out alive.

Just as the flow of people seemed to ebb, Jayne and Gaius appeared in the doorway, the latter severely out of breath. “We need to go,” he managed to get out between pants.

Mal turned back to look at the scientists, who no longer cowered, but were merely sitting quite bored under the tables in the atrium. “Thank you, ladies and gents,” he said, “Ya’ll have been fine hostages, and we hope ya’ll have a lovely day. Hopefully the others won’t cause too much of a ruckus on their way out.” A nod of his head signaled the crowd to move out.

\---

Tactically, they were humped. There were too many people crammed into the small corridor- Kara, Lee, Adama, Chief, Kaylee, Helo, Hoshi, Tigh, two Eights, D’Anna, as well as several Dorals, a couple of Leobens, a Six and even a Cavil- covering the back side of the group, picking off a soldier at a time as they came trickling through the back entrance to the lab.

Making it into the atrium was a bit of a reprieve, allowing them to spread out and open up their attack range, but it was only a slight advantage. Time was not on their side and the number of soldiers was increasing. Moving out, beyond the atrium would put them back in the tricky tactical situation of being on top of each other.

From the corridor, a hail of gunfire filled the room and while most were able to take shelter behind one of the tables or against the front wall, D’Anna and a Doral both dropped before anyone could move to help them; bright red pooled against the bright white tile of the floor.

Kara looked over to see Lee beside her crouched and examining his leg, a stream of blood trickling from a bullet wound. Turning to Helo she barked, “Get Lee out of here, RFN.”

“Yes, sir,” Helo replied, as he bent to hoist Lee to his feet.

“I’m fine,” Lee said, trying to pull away, raising his gun to prepare for another confrontation.

“The frak, you are. No one else is dying today, alright? So just go!” she yelled.

\---

Mal and Zoë led the first wave of escapees back to the hangar bay, only to find their own personal swarm of Alliance soldiers waiting for them as well. “Looks like we got a party,” Mal said, whipping his gun out of his holster.

The group scattered. Not the most brilliant idea, but it was better than standing in a clump waiting to get shot like fish in a barrel. As the bullets began to fly, those who were unarmed ducked for cover behind the ASREVs-- as did those who were armed, who used the ships for cover as they fired into the crowd of soldiers, trying to keep their line back. One Doral in particular had taken to trying to get the hatch on one of the ships open.

There were at least forty soldiers standing between them and the two ships at the opposite end of the hangar deck, Caprica noted as she peered out from behind one of the ships, holding Liam to her chest, hand covering the back of his head.

“You’re bleeding,” she heard a voice behind her speak. She turned her head to see Gaius moving to kneel beside her. He tugged gently at the bloodstained sleeve of her dress revealing both a tear in the fabric and in the flesh. “We’ve got to get you to the ship right away,” he said over the roar of another round of gunfire.

She watched as he peered out from behind the ship to see the figure of former Lt. Dualla standing between the two ships, gun raised and firing bullets into the legs of any soldier she could hit, helping to clear the path towards the ships. Smiling, he returned and extended his hand. She couldn’t help but smile as she took it.

\---

Tyrol heard the clunk of metal at his feet. This had become too easy, he’d thought; they were changing their tactics. “FRAK!” He yelled as the grenade rolled towards his feet, “Explosive, everyone fall back now!” There was no concern for tactics now; everyone pushed back to get out of the atrium.

In the scramble to fall back down the hall, Tyrol felt one person brush past him. Looking up he saw one dark-haired woman storming forward. “Boomer?!” he called. He didn’t see much of her face, just the flash of a grin before she swooped down and snatched up the device before hurling it right back into the center of the oncoming Alliance goons.

Like a clock ticking off seconds.

The grenade hit the metal floor.

A gun fired.

The rebels hit the ground, bracing for the explosion.

The sickening thud of a bullet sinking into flesh.

A body dropping to the floor.

No one heard him calling out Sharon’s name over the sound of the explosion.

\---

The hangar deck fell silent. Bullets no longer flew, people no longer howled in pain, those in hiding emerged from their covers to break for their respective ships before another wave of fighters could come to take them out.

\---

Kara groaned as she opened her eyes and began to push herself to her feet. She’d barely rose a foot off the ground before a sharp white pain blaze through her side. “Frak,” she groaned, sliding against the wall. “Really, really lost my edge.” Running her fingers over her side, she felt the stream of blood that was flowing down from her stomach

Kara looked up, trying to force herself to see through her blurred sight. Through the smoke from the explosion, she saw the outlines of several Cylons, several people toting automatic rifles aimed back towards the Alliance soldiers. The corridor blazed red as a new alarm sounded, and a grinding of metal indicated that the hatch between the corridor and the hangar deck was about to be sealed. In the blinking red light, she could make out Sam’s face and his weakened body as one of the defenders. “Go,” he said firmly.

 “No way,” she hissed as she struggled to her feet. “No way. I came here to get you and I’m not leaving you behind again.” She strained over the roar of the alarm. “Lee told everyone who was injured to fall back! Why the frak didn’t you fall back?” 

“I knew,” he said; she shuddered at the shakiness in his voice. “I just knew I wasn’t going to make it out of here and even if we left now I…” His voice trailed off, unable to bring himself to finish the thought. “Let me do this.”

“No! No, we’re not leaving any one behind. I won’t let you stay behind and die I’m not going to let that happen!”

“And if you don’t leave now you’re going to die. Kara… you’re… just this once… let me be the hero.”

Kara felt a strong hand on her shoulder just as her knees went weak. The world around her faded into black.

\---

_…-y gods, what hap-…_

_…-oing to be alrig-…_

_…us the frak out of…_

\---

“This has to stop happening.” Lee heard her voice, strained, as she began to open her eyes. He’d been sitting at the foot of Kara’s bed in the crew quarters beneath the bridge for at least a solid hour at that point, watching her rest.

“What has to stop?” he asked.

She took a deep breath, grounding herself in reality. “Waking up not knowing how I got wherever,” she said as she pushed herself up to sit.

 “At least this time it wasn’t a bar fight.” Off her confused look he continued. “Chief told me.”

“Figures,” she said. “Three times in one month, though. Twice because of the frakking Alliance.”

Lee reached out, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “Don’t worry about that. You’re not the only one who took a beating today. There was…” Lee’s voice trailed off as he watched the memories of the raid flooded Kara’s mind.

He saw her eyes widened just a bit, a deep breath caught in her chest as though unable to release the sigh. “…How long was I out?”

“About ten hours,” he said.

 “Ten hours…” He could hear the sorrow that lingered in her voice, even if she refused to show it. “Gods!” she yelled, swapping her sorrow for anger-- typical. “He was so stupid! I went there to save him. I’m always going and saving his stupid ass. It’s practically what I do and then he… he had to go be brave… the frakker!” She shut her eyes and leaned back against the wall. “Who was it? Do… do you know who…”

“It was my dad.”

She finally let out the breath held in too long. “I should have guessed.”

“I don’t think he could’ve lived with himself if he left you there,” Lee said, the serious tone returning. “I don’t think I could have lived with him either,” he finished as she opened her eyes to look at him and almost smiled.

Maybe it wasn't the most opportune moment, but he leaned towards her, gently cupping his hand against her cheek and closed the distance between them with the kind of kiss he’d been waiting to give her since he couldn’t remember when. When she leaned into the kiss he couldn’t tell if tell she’d been waiting for it too or if maybe she just really needed the comfort.

“Take your time,” he said, after he’d pulled away. “We’ve got things under control topside.” Lee lifted himself from the bed, adjusting his weight to his good leg.

“…Can’t you just… stay a little longer?”

“You need to get your strength back up and nothing’s going to happen that will lead to rest if I stay,” he said with a bit of a smirk.

“That’s not what I meant," she snapped. The momentary outburst faded quickly to reveal just how worn she actually was. " You’re just gonna leave right now… right when… ” Kara frowned softly as she searched her mind for the right words. “There’s… so much…” She couldn’t find them.

“I’m sorry, Kara," he said, considering for a moment reaching out to touch her cheek, but thinking better of it. "I know this hurts, and I’m not talking about the shrapnel. It’s painful and confusing and I don’t think me staying here is going to make it any easier.”

“I just... don’t want to be alone right now.”

Lee gave a soft laugh. “I’m just going upstairs; you make it sound like I’m going back to Ariel. Right now, I have to get topside; there’s a lot of debate about where we go from here. But I promise, we will figure everything out as soon as we figure out…” Lee trailed off as he tried to figure out the best way to let Kara know the news. “You know… you look really beautiful, even on a wanted poster.”

“Wanted poster?” Kara scoffed as she lay back down, wincing as she did. “Figures.”

Lee smiled. As he started from the room, he looked at her over his shoulder. “I’ve missed you, Starbuck.”

He was almost gone from the room before she spoke again; her voice was tired, straining. “See you around, Apollo.”

\---

“Are you sure I can’t just-”

“Gaius, I promise you, I’m fine.” Caprica said, gently brushing his hand away from her injured shoulder with a smile on her face. He’d found her sitting in one of the bunks after tending to the injured parties on the ship and he wasn’t quite sure what to say to her. “Thank you,” she said.

“There’s no need to thank me. I’ve been fixing bullet wounds ever since we got on this ship.”

“Not for that,” she said. “I’ve heard talk that you led the others to the lab.”

“Oh well, that-” 

“Anonymously.” He saw a kind of glow to her smile, an expression he’d never really seen before, and he couldn’t place what exactly it was.

Gaius gave a nod of his head as he smirked at himself. “That wasn’t anything… honorable on my part. I simply thought they’d never come if they knew I was sending the messages and when I heard they had you I-”

He never got to finish his sentence. She leaned in with a kiss that told him after all this time, despite all his faults, and after everything that had gone wrong, she was still in love with him. He threaded his arms around her waist and just as he felt the weight of her pushing him against the bed, the sound of someone clearing their throat killed the moment.

Gaius looked up to see the red dress and the pinstripe suit, and the faces of those wearing them, staring back at him. She looked amused; he looked rather bored.

“What are you…” Gaius began, only to trail off when he heard Caprica’s voice sharing his words. As he turned to look at her, they shared a single voice once again, “You see them too?”

“Are you quite through?” the avatar of Gaius asked.

“What is this?” Gaius asked, reluctantly sitting up and crossing his hands over his lap, trying to hide the reasons for his reluctance from the intruders. “For the past four years, you have been popping in and out of my life at the most inopportune of times, and I would really like to know once and for all why you’ve put me through all of this?”

“Put you through all of this?” the spectral Six echoed him. “Gaius, you’re such a smart man. I find it hard to believe you haven’t figured it all out by now.”

“Coincidence is a rare event. Sure, two people can just happen by the same place at the same time, a likely event in a small town. But in the whole great wide universe, you found another human civilization,” He seemed to beam with pride at the thought. “Call it fate… destiny… intuition… fortune…gods-”

“Or God,” she interjected.

“-the Powers That Be. Call it whatever. There is more to this universe than you could imagine and you all are their Champions.”

“That’s not to discredit you,” she said, leaning upon the male being’s shoulder. “You all were the ones who made the hard choices, the sacrifices, and even the tiny gestures that turned out to be more that you could have ever imagined. In the end, it was you who brought yourselves here… with a little bit of guidance.” She paused to take a reverent breath. “Doesn’t it feel… appropriate somehow? This world has lost its way, and it seems that it’s in need of someone to find it once again.”

\---

It was only about an hour after Lee’s visit that Kara finally dragged herself out of bed. Blood loss or no, mourning or no, she was the captain around here. She stumbled a bit as she got onto her feet. Though bandaged, the wound in her side hurt like a bitch.

Leaving her bunk, she scaled the stairs to the main room and she saw that Tigh must have raided her kitchen and gotten the good stuff while he was there. He and Ellen sat at the bottom of the far stairs with two glasses and a half-empty bottle of shimmerwine. Tigh cast a nervous, fatherly eye to the two children who were occupying the majority of space in the room every once in a while, though he and his wife seemed to be engaged in a long overdue talk.

In the middle of the room, Hera seemed to have invented a new game in which she ran around in circles and baby Liam crawled after her. While the older couple didn’t seem to be at the best capacity for babysitting, Helo and Athena sat on the mattress on the floor with an eye on the kids, but mostly they just sat and held each other. Kara watched them with a hint of a smile before turning towards the bridge.

She opened the hatch only to have her ears assaulted with a heated debate of the room’s occupants. The noise came to a halt as she stepped into the room, closing the hatch behind her. She glanced around to see Gaeta and Hoshi sitting in the seats by the scanner, Dee by the communications console, Adama leaning against the co-pilot’s chair with Roslin just behind him, and Lee standing just beside the pilot’s chair.

She gave a nod and a light smile, as she glanced around the room. She turned to Gaeta, wanting to bury herself in business. “What’s the sitrep?”

“Well,” he said, looking up at her, “We heard back from _Serenity_ about an hour after we jumped out of there, they made it out safely, no casualties. We’re also apparently invited to a wedding, details to follow. Chief and Kaylee are engaged.” He said gleefully before quickly shifting gears. “Also, we got a wave from Sonja; the Cylons are taking the ASREV they hijacked out towards the rim planets, looking to hide out there.”

Kara sunk down into the pilot’s chair, “And what was the apparently riveting conversation I walked in on?”

“Politics,” Lee said.

Laura heaved a sigh as she glanced out into the black. “Something has just gone terribly wrong with these worlds.”

“It’s not our place to just come in here and try to change their way of life,” Lee replied. “But we do have citizens out there, citizens we subjected to living in this world… and I would like more than anything to see a real civilian government, representatives that actually look out for the people. Did you ever think you’d miss the Quorum?” He asked.

The former president couldn’t help but laugh at the sentiment before returning to her more serious tone. “It just feels like we should be able to do something.”

“Unfortunately, it’s not our war to fight,” Adama replied.

Kara let those words sink in for a moment before she actually joined the conversation. “No… it’s not our war… it’s the Browncoats’ war… they fought it… and they lost.” Her voice didn’t tell a story. “It’s Zoë and Mal’s war… their people… their fight. It’s more or less up to them.” She sat up straight in her seat. “Gaeta.”

“Yes?”

“Send Serenity a wave,” she said. “Tell Mal… tell him we owe him one. Anything he needs. Who knows…” she turned her attention back to the group at large, “maybe someday we can actually make a difference here.”

  
\--Fin--


End file.
